


Ghosts in the Floorboards

by tosca1390



Series: At the Turn of the Tide [3]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 21:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something didn’t seem right, though she could not place it. It was the same sort of feeling she had in her chest when she looked at Tony now, like she was missing an important piece of a puzzle she should have solved already.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*

Ziva arrived at the firing range early in the morning, mind still jumbled and unsettled from the night before. It was still humid, a clammy dampness clinging to her palms, but the sun peeked through sheer clouds. The range was nearly empty, and the clearly antsy instructor was waiting, clipboard in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. 

“Don’t see why this had to be so early,” he grumbled, showing his visible youth in attitude, despite his sharpshooter ranking. 

She pulled her hair back into a low ponytail, pulling out her Sig. “I want to get it done,” she said curtly. 

He waved her on, eyes half-lidded. She wanted to snap his fingers right off his cup of coffee, but merely walked into the stall and lifted her gun. Her mind stilled and sharpened its focus. The humanoid target shifted as she trained her eye on the bulls-eye; she saw a stubbly jaw, a too-bright, gleaming smile, dark, vicious yet deadly-kind eyes. 

The target became Akil; she shot perfectly.

She walked into NCIS later that morning with her gun at her hip, and a smile touching her mouth. Tony was hunched at his desk, grimacing at his computer, but at the sight of her he perked up. 

“There’s our ninja,” he said, straightening in his chair. “What’s the verdict?”

She sat down at her desk, shrugging off her jacket and flashing her gun. “No problems whatsoever.”

He jabbed a fist into the air. “What did I tell you?” he said, smirking unbearably. “I’m always right.”

“I think my skill with guns had something to do with it,” she retorted light-heartedly, lovingly sliding her fingers over her Sig.

His eyes strayed over her; she could feel her collarbones get hot under the thin cotton of her shirt. “Or it was my inspiring pep talk. Wax on, wax off, grasshopper,” he intoned, arms stretched over his head. 

She rolled her eyes and set her gun in her side desk drawer, but she wasn’t able to rid herself of her smile all day, or the color in her skin.

*

A few days later, Abby brought in a cake in the shape of a gun to celebrate. Though Ziva was tempted to ask where Abby had gotten that kind of a cake pan, she didn’t. She merely smiled, hugged her and said thanks, but allowed Tony and McGee to eat most of it. The mid-September heat was distracting, as was the lack of a case to occupy her time. 

Therefore, she kept her attention focused on the files spread out before her, documents relating her recovery from Somalia. Something didn’t seem _right_ , though she could not place it. It was the same sort of feeling she had in her chest when she looked at Tony now, like she was missing an important piece of a puzzle she should have solved already.

“No cake for you?”

She looked up from her desk to see Tony hovering over her, a plate of chocolate cake in his hand. “Not right now,” she said distantly, managing a smile. 

He shrugged. “More for me and McGee. Not that he needs it,” he teased with a smirk.

McGee coughed distinctly from his corner of the pit. “I heard that, Tony.”

“Meant you to, McGirdle,” Tony retorted back, winking at her. “At least take it home, Ziva. You don’t have any food at your place.”

McGee perked up at that; his eyes skittered between both of them. “And how do you know that, Tony?” he asked with a slight smirk.

“Don’t get huffy. I’ll come over and tuck you in tonight if you want,” Tony drawled.

Ziva rolled her eyes, fingers drumming idly on the papers in front of her. “You are ridiculous,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes. 

Tony chuckled. “Part of my charm.”

“Is that what you call it?” McGee said dryly.

Before Tony could reply, Gibbs rounded the partitions, snapping his phone shut. “Grab your gear,” he said as he strode through the pit. “Dead corporal in Bethesda Naval Hospital.”

Standing and grabbing her gun from her desk drawer, Ziva shut the file folders and shoved the papers in her desk as Tony groaned. “You know, people do die in hospitals sometimes. Why is it _our_ problem, Boss?” he asked.

Gibbs shot him a glance as he passed Ziva’s desk. “Because yesterday all she had was a broken leg, and now she’s dead, DiNozzo. Any other useless questions?”

She grabbed her backpack, sharing a grin with McGee as Tony rubbed his forehead. “No, I’m done,” he muttered as the three of them followed Gibbs to the elevator and stepped in. 

“You’re never done,” Gibbs muttered, though the corners of his mouth were twitching upwards. 

Adjusting her bag on her shoulder, Ziva bit her lip as she felt Tony’s fingers brush her bare elbow as they stood in the back. She knew letting him graze her like this wasn’t the best idea; as far they’d come, it was still shaky and unsteady between them. But she was so happy to be back on a case and going to a crime scene that she didn’t mind.

“Tony, you drive,” Gibbs said as the elevator pinged, and they stepped out into the bright, sun-filled lobby. 

Tony whooped. “DiNozzo for the win!”

Wrinkling her nose, she punched his arm. “We would get there much faster if I drove, Gibbs,” she pointed out as they walked through the glass doors into the parking lot. Sweat immediately beaded near her temple and along the nape of her neck, and she frowned into the sun.

“Yeah, but I don’t trust you not to run over someone in lunch hour traffic,” Gibbs replied easily, Tony and McGee chuckling. 

Gibbs did have a point.

She sighed and punched Tony in the upper arm once more to shut him up. 

*

Even the mention of a hospital made Ziva uneasy; before her stays in Bahrain and Bethesda had colored her view permanently, hospitals had always reminded her of Gibbs in his coma; Lieutenant Sanders; Tony’s undercover mission, the months of thinking he was dying and not telling her, the trust lost between them. Now, they reminded her of blurred vision and broken bones, the phantom pain of torture, Michael’s death; Tony as a permanent fixture in her dark room, her own personal gargoyle.

Ducky’s truck was already there by the time they arrived at Bethesda, which she _knew_ would not have happened if she had been driving. As they hopped into the hot midday sun, she took a deep breath, trying to steel her nerves. She felt ridiculous; this was not how she wanted to behave, especially at work. 

“You were too slow,” she said teasingly to Tony, trying to lighten the mood as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and followed him through the parking lot. The air shimmered with heat right above the asphalt.

He shot her a look, dropping back to walk beside her as Gibbs and McGee took the lead. “Not all of us drive at breakneck speeds.”

“Yes, but you could at least go the speed _limit_ ,” she retorted.

“And you wonder why the traffic cops in D.C. know you so well,” he teased back with a wide grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Would you two quit acting like teenagers?” Gibbs said over his shoulder as they strode through the automatic doors and into the cool hospital. She wrinkled her nose as she breathed in; even the air felt sterile in her lungs.

Tony smirked. “Teenagers? Oooh, let’s go make out in a custodial closet.”

“Why a closet?” she asked as they rounded a corner.

“ _The Breakfast Club_.” At her blank look, he shook his head sadly. “It’s a classic representation of the trials and tribulations of high school. It can be our next movie.”

“Our next movie?” she asked, raising a brow.

His face abruptly changed from cocky amusement to hesitancy. “If you want, I mean—“

She nudged him in the arm, smiling slightly. “Sounds fun.”

He grinned once more, this one twinkling in his eyes. “A night with me is always fun, Zee-vah,” he said with a leer.

She rolled her eyes, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape and into the hospital room, which looked oddly familiar. Frowning, she turned to Tony, who’d stopped in the doorway with a grimace. 

“This was your room,” he said flatly. 

Her stomach turned on itself. “Yes,” she said quietly, glancing around. 

McGee was in the process of taking pictures, and Ducky and Palmer were examining the body. The dead corporal looked quite pretty, which she knew was weird to think; the girl’s hair was dark and curly against the white hospital sheet, her skin tan, face round in the cheeks, nose flat in its slope. She did not look dead. In fact, she looked oddly like—

“Wow. She looks like you, Ziva,” Palmer piped up from the bedside. 

She frowned at him, and he immediately coughed and looked away. Ducky raised his eyebrows, glancing up at her. “In the way that all women with long dark hair do, I assume is what Mr. Palmer meant,” he said reassuringly, pulling out the liver probe. 

“Tony, bag and tag. Ziva, go find Corporal Feldman’s medical records and chart from the nurses,” Gibbs rattled off as he peered around the room. 

Nodding, she turned and pulled the brim of her hat down further over her eyes. Tony touched her shoulder as she passed, and she spared him a forced smile, unable to escape the odd nervousness tingling through her limbs. 

The nurses, as usual, were incredibly difficult; Ziva tried to be understanding, she knew their jobs were very important, but she did not want to suffer from a Gibbs head-slap her first real day back. She waited at the station, drumming her fingers in her frustration. 

_This would go faster if Gibbs had sent Tony_ , she thought glumly. _That Italian charm or whatever._

“Any time would be nice,” she said finally, voice laced with sarcasm. “I am only trying to conduct an investigation.”

An older, curly-haired woman with crow’s feet and a piercing glare merely looked at her. She rolled her eyes, glancing down the hall. A young man in civilian clothes, tall and blonde and lanky, hurried down the hall, eyes wide and worried. 

“Hey—hey—I need to get down there—“ he exclaimed as he passed Ziva, voice hoarse. 

Tightening her jaw, Ziva pushed herself off the counter and grasped his arm tightly, bringing him to a stop. “That part of the hall is blocked off, sir,” she said calmly. “It will re-open soon.”

He went pale under his tan; his skin lay too close to the planes of his face, and she could see bags under his eyes. “What happened?”

“Please, just have a seat. It will open up to visitors soon,” she said firmly, guiding him to a seat. 

“But my girlfriend—she’s expecting me—she’s getting released now, I’m supposed to pick her up—“ he rambled as he let Ziva sit him down. 

An odd shiver curled up her spine. “Name?” she asked. 

“Feldman. Leah Feldman,” he said, brow furrowing. 

“Hey, Officer! Got your file!”

Swallowing hard, Ziva turned and grabbed the manila folder from the scowling nurse before turning back to the young man, who looked absolutely terrified. “Sir, wait here,” she said gently before heading down the hall and ducking under the tape. 

“About damn time, Ziva,” Gibbs said as she broke the threshold of the room.

“If you wanted them any faster, you should have sent Tony,” she retorted, handing the files over. Ducky and Palmer were zipping her up in the body bag and loading her onto the gurney; bile threatened the back of Ziva’s throat. “I think her boyfriend is here,” she said finally.

“Go interview him,” Gibbs said without looking at her, peering at the files. 

She clenched her jaw. “He does not seem to know she is dead,” she said flatly. 

At that, Gibbs glanced at her. “Then I guess you’d better tell him, and then interview him. You’ll have a good idea of whether he did it,” he said evenly, glancing her over. “Can you do that?”

It seemed as if everyone had their eyes on her, questioning her just as Gibbs was; she bristled, straightening her spine. “Of course,” she said, turning on her heel and heading back out. She could still feel Tony’s eyes on her, even from in the hall. 

*

The boyfriend’s name was Jake Biddle, and he hadn’t spoken for a full five minutes. 

Ziva had managed to pull him into an empty room to tell him the news; his immediate reaction was silence. His eyes were wet, and he looked even paler than before, but he hadn’t uttered a word, and that was all the reaction she needed. Shock was difficult to fake; she had been trained by the best to catch the liars, and this man was not one. 

“I am sorry,” she said finally, notepad sitting harmlessly on her lap.

He shook his head, late-morning sun glinting off his hair. “She was coming home with me today,” he said faintly. “All she had was a broken leg.”

She watched him as he shifted on the thin hospital bed, his hands clenched into fists on his knees. The muscles in his arms were visibly tense under the skin. “When were you last here?” she asked gently, pulling her pen from her ponytail and uncapping it. 

Jake blinked rapidly, brow furrowed. “I… I was here last night until midnight, and then the nurses made me leave. She seemed fine; she was laughing and joking around about crutches,” he said, voice reedy.

“She did not complain of any pains?”

He huffed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “She had a broken leg, of course she was in pain,” he muttered. 

She took a steadying breath. “Anything strange?”

“Nah. She couldn’t feel much, they had her on Vicodin, or something,” he said, looking up at her. “How did this happen?”

Keeping her eyes on the paper, she wrote as he spoke, stomach turning. “We are investigating that, Jake. This is your first time back at the hospital?”

“Yes. I was getting the apartment ready for her to come home,” he said thickly. 

“Do you have contact information for her family?” she asked gently. 

“Her dad, yeah. He’s the only one she’s got—had. God—“

She looked up as he cut off, watching silently as he buried his head in his hands, shoulders silently shaking. Her chest tightened horribly, sharp pain pushing out like knives. She looked down at her notepad, licking her lips as the door creaked open.

“There you are—Oh.”

Glancing over, she met Tony’s awkward, shifty gaze, and released a breath she hadn’t noticed holding. “Jake, I will be right back,” she said softly before getting up and walking towards the doorway. 

Tony stepped out into the hall as she shut the door behind them. “Think he did it?” he asked, voice low.

“No,” she said shortly, a phantom ache in her right hand taking her attention. “All done?”

He nodded, eyes moving over her in concern. “Yeah, we’re ready to head out. Gonna ask him back?”

She nodded, rubbing her right hand. “Yes. The interview is not done.”

Warm, strong fingers curled over her shoulder. “You okay?” 

Her ribs squeezed on her lungs at his touch, an unbearable tightness. “I am fine,” she said tersely, pulling away from him. “I will meet you at the truck.”

A weird look passed over his face, and he stepped back. “You got it,” he said quietly before walking away. 

Shutting her eyes, she leaned against the door, able to hear the muffled sound of choking sobs through the wood. Her heart clenched in sympathy, but the odd rankle in her bones remained; it almost felt as if she were being watched.

*

After getting the father’s contact information, she sent Jake home, told him to come to NCIS in the morning for the rest of the interview. On the ride back, she took the back of the truck, sitting silently away from the screen. The men talked briefly, looked back at her every once in a while, but did not make an attempt to engage her in conversation, for which she was thankful.

Back in the pit, she made Tony call Feldman’s father while she looked over the medical files, but she could hear the anguish from across the way, and it panged deep in her chest. 

“He’s coming,” Tony said tiredly as he hung up ten minutes into the call. “Those calls never get easier.”

She kept her focus on her computer, frowning. “She was in a car accident two days ago,” she said distractedly. “She drove off the road into a guardrail and broke her leg.”

“Any how or why?” he asked, suspicion lacing his voice.

Narrowing her eyes, she shook her head. “She said she was run off the road, but the force of the blow knocked her out, and she didn’t remember who or what. Local police labeled it a hit and run.”

“Uh-huh. I think something’s rotten in the state of Denmark,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a squeak of the joints.

She looked in, eyebrow raised in surprise. “Quoting a play, Tony?”

He grinned sheepishly. “If you mean am I quoting Lawrence Olivier and Mel Gibson, then yes,” he said, stretching his arms over his head. The weird, distant look from the hospital remained in his eyes, and she looked away quickly.

“Silly me,” she deadpanned.

“You knuckleheads got anything for me?” Gibbs barked as he strode through the pit, setting a Caf-Pow on his desk. 

“Suspicious car accident caused the broken leg and the hospital stay, Boss,” Tony piped up immediately, and she glared at him.

Gibbs glanced at him, his fingers wrapped around a fourth cup of coffee. “Well, get the car over here so Abby can take a look at it, DiNozzo.”

She snorted as Tony grimaced painfully; local police were a complete headache to deal with. “The father is on his way. He should be here by tomorrow,” she supplied. “And Jake Biddle, the boyfriend, is coming back in for his interview in the morning.”

“Gut reaction, Ziva?” Gibbs asked, brow furrowed.

Biting the inside of her lip, she leaned back in her chair. “He did not have anything to do with it,” she said slowly, the background mumble of Tony arguing with his phone comforting. “His shock was pure.”

Nodding, Gibbs grabbed his desk phone as it rang. “Yeah. Okay.” He slammed it down. “Which arm had the IV?”

She looked down, frowning at the chicken-scratch handwriting. “Looks like the right arm.”

“Ducky says she’s got an extra puncture mark in her left arm. Figure out where it’s from.” 

He left as quickly as he had come, Caf-Pow in hand, and Ziva tapped her fingers along the cool surface of her desk. “She was Jewish,” she said softly to herself, words jumbling in her vision.

“I’m on hold,” Tony muttered, glancing over at her. “What’d you say?”

“Jewish,” she repeated, fingertips automatically going to her collarbones, lightly fingering the fabric on which her necklace would usually rest; she did not notice its absence often, but now she felt it painfully. “She was Jewish.”

His eyes fixed on her, brows knitting together. “Yeah. Huh,” he said, jumping in his chair. “Yeah, I’m still here. I’m with NCIS, I need to speak with—what? _Naval Criminal Investigative Service_ ,” he said curtly, shaking his head at her.

Her neck burned; she could nearly feel the indentations left by Akil as he had ripped her necklace from her all those months ago. Shaking her head, she rubbed her temple and peered at her computer once more, skin hot against the bones of her face.

*

At the end of the day, Ziva ended up in Autopsy. It was late, nearly ten at night, and Palmer had already left, but Ducky was still there, working on Leah Feldman. She had moved through the day sifting through puzzle pieces in her mind, distracted and uneasy, and all she wanted was a quiet moment to breathe through it all. 

Getting out of the elevator, she pressed the button, and the doors swished open. 

“Ah, hello, Ziva,” Ducky said distractedly, peering at Feldman’s pale, freckled arm.

She smiled faintly, taking a seat in Palmer’s empty office chair. “I am sorry if I am disturbing you.”

He set down his scalpel and peeled off the blood-speckled gloves. “Nightcap?” he offered, untying his apron. 

She nodded. “I did not feel like going home quite yet.”

“Ah,” he said as he walked over, pulling up a chair and settling down across from her. “I understand. It’s horrible when they die so young.”

“Any clues as to what happened?” she asked.

Brow furrowed, he cast his eyes over to the girl on the slab. “She has some swelling in her face and extremities, and her lymph nodes are enlarged, which is curious. I didn’t read of any underlying conditions in her medical history. I still don’t have any answers for it. I’m still talking with her, though. I think she has more to say.”

“I could not figure out where the extra puncture mark came from. All her medicines were either administered by IV or pill form,” she said, drumming her fingers on her knee. 

Ducky shrugged, looking unsettled. “Perhaps a recent allergy shot,” he murmured, though he did not sound like he believed himself anymore than she did.

Biting her lip, she glanced over at the pale, cold body, eyes running over her face. “Palmer said she looked like me. Do you think so?” she asked quietly. 

“Like I said this morning, in the way all brunette women do,” he replied, voice filled with forced lightness. 

She kept her eyes on the dead Corporal. “Be honest, Ducky. I would prefer it.”

A moment of hesitation, and then Ducky sighed. “The bone structure is similar, as is her coloring. She’s also your height and weight, just about.” 

He rustled around in his drawer; she could hear the clink of glasses, the slip-sound of liquid hitting glass. 

“She was also Jewish,” she said after a moment, glancing at Ducky. 

Eyebrows raised, he held a glass with three fingers of whiskey out to her. “What did Gibbs say about that?”

She rolled her eyes, taking a long sip. “Nothing yet. No one else seems to think anything of it,” she said quietly. 

“But you do.”

Shrugging, she looked down at the amber liquid, slow soothing warmth filling her from stomach up to her head. “A woman about my age, who looks like me and is Jewish by birth, is apparently murdered in a naval hospital, ensuring NCIS involvement.”

They sat in quiet for a moment, sipping from their glasses. “All coincidences, perhaps,” Ducky said finally. 

She leaned back in her chair, flexing the fingers on her right hand. “I do not believe in coincidences,” she says softly. “None of us do.”

“My dear, I’m sure it’s just a mistake. Perhaps an overdose from her pain meds,” he said reassuringly, his doctor’s touch gentle on her bare arm. 

It was possible, but she knew that was not it. 

“In any case, we have to wait for Abby to give us the toxicology results. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, Ziva,” he added. 

“They are afraid of scaring me,” she said, goosebumps rising on her arms. Her voice sounded hollow in the cavernous room. “They think I am still fragile.”

“Fragile? I sincerely doubt that,” he said seriously. “I think that we’re all exercising care over a loved one, Ziva. They are only doing what they think is best, as frustrating and misplaced as it may seem.”

Breathing deeply, she gave him a small smile and finished her drink. “Thanks, Ducky.”

He smiled kindly, and his gaze went past her. “Someone’s been looking for you, I think,” he said; she thought she could see a twinkle in his eye, but it could have been a trick of the lights. 

She turned as the doors swished open, and Tony walked in, a bag slung on each shoulder. “Gibbs is kicking us out. Wants us to get sleep,” he said, the lightness of his tone belaying the worry she could see in his gaze. “Brought your stuff.”

Standing, she smiled faintly. “Thank you,” she said, glancing at Ducky. “Will you leave soon, too?”

Ducky nodded. “Not much else to do until the test results return. Have a good night. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

They both bade Ducky goodbye and headed to the elevator. Tony still had her bag, but when she went to reach for it, he moved away. 

“I’ve got it,” he said, watching her carefully. “You’ve been quiet.”

She shrugged as the elevator doors slid open, and they stepped inside. “Long day.”

The elevator hummed to life as she pressed the button for the lobby. She could feel his eyes on her, and she sighed. “You have been looking at me all day. Why?”

“Giving yourself a lot of credit there, Ninja Girl,” he said teasingly. 

She rolled her eyes, waiting in silence as the elevator stopped and they walked out through the dark, empty lobby. Outside, the night was mild and breezy, with clouds floating above them, but the air smelled of water and ozone. She’d parked closer to the building than he had, but when they reached her Mini, he didn’t continue on to his car; he merely stood and watched her, still holding her bag.

“My bag?” she said finally, holding out a hand.

Slowly, he handed it over. “Weird day,” he said quietly, rubbing his hand through his hair. 

She nodded, and he continued. “Being back at the hospital, in that room, it was very—well, weird,” he said with a shrug. “You know—well, you know I was there—“

“Every night,” she interjected gently, toes curling in her shoes. “I know.”

He gave her a tight-lipped smile, nudged her shoulder with his. “Okay. Night, Ziva,” he murmured, walking around her car and further down the empty lot towards his Mustang.

What she hadn’t said: she knew he was there every night in Bethesda because she made sure to wake up and watch him as he in turn watched her. In the darkness, he had never noticed, and she had been free to observe him, hunched in the little chair, poking at the arm that had been in a sling for a month. It had meant more than she could say to have him there, and that unsettled her. 

She wanted to tell him, but now was not the time. Sometimes, she thought the time would never come.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

So many things slipped through the cracks of her mind, now. 

Her necklace, the days of torture, her father, the grief from Michael’s death; the effort to stay upright every day took more energy than she had thought. Getting back to the Ziva everyone wanted her to be had been at the forefront of her mind for the last two months, and she had blocked out weaknesses: the memory of torture, Michael’s blood on her hands, pinning Tony to scalding Tel Aviv concrete. 

She refused to think of these things, and it had served her fine, until now.

Every time she closed her eyes for sleep, she dreamed of running pell-mell through the desert, her skin burning off in the unforgiving sun, Akil’s low, dark laughter ringing in her ears right behind her. She saw herself switching places with Leah Feldman, lying cold and grey as death on an Autopsy slab, her lost Star-of-David necklace a warm reflection on her bloodless skin. 

She lay awake for hours, memorizing the patterns of starlight on the ceiling before giving up the search for sleep. And when she could not sleep, she moved. She was a woman of action, after all. 

Four in the morning found Ziva huffing and puffing in the guest bedroom, beating the living daylights out of her punching bag. Her sneakers squeaked on the hardwood floors as she rotated around the swaying bag, hair swinging from side to side in its high ponytail. The exertion gave her something to focus on, something to still her racing mind.

So, she punched and grunted until her hands were numb and her wrists ached. Then she cleaned up, grabbed her gun and her bag and let her hair curl in the early-morning mist as she locked her apartment and went to work. 

The skies were dark and thick with clouds, promising rain and perhaps a storm. A copper-rain scent was heavy in the air; it settled painfully in her lungs. Her scars ached with the change in air pressure. When she arrived at work, she was the first one there, which did not surprise her. She ran her fingers through her curls as she sat at her desk, pulling out the reports on Somalia once more. 

The differences in writing style from one team member to another were interesting; McGee was detailed and detached, writing of the building’s technical structure and the numbers of enemy targets—

_Joining myself and Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo was a group of fifteen Seals from the base in Bahrain. We were outfitted with body armor, but kept our own weapons. The house in question stood at the outskirts of a Somali village, run-down and rickety, but serviceable. It stood three floors tall, with one guard in the doorway. Four other enemy targets were on the first floor—_

Tony’s, however, was completely focused on her. Of course he wrote clinically, just as he was trained, but the entire two pages were dedicated to her state of being. He wrote of her injuries, the state of her clothes, the surgeries she underwent, how he had killed the man standing behind her—

_Behind Agent David, a tall dark-haired man stood with a gun aimed directly at her. I took him out with my gun, a double tap to the chest. He fell behind her to the floor. I untied Agent David from the chair she was restrained to, and Agent Gibbs and myself carried her out to safety. The team followed us out to the helicopters and we returned to Bahrain—_

What neither report let her in on was _how_. How had they known where to find her?

As the hour turned to seven, and people began to filter into the office, she felt that odd curl in her spine, a chill at the nape of her neck. Her gut curdled; it was almost as if she was being watched once more, and not by friendly eyes. 

*

Upon his arrival, McGee did a double take as he bid her good morning. 

“You look like you haven’t slept at _all_ ,” he said, nearly aghast as he set his stuff at his desk. 

Ziva narrowed her eyes at him. “How flattering,” she said flatly. “You must be picking up tips from Tony.”

Reddening, he ducked his head. “I just—well, are you okay, Ziva?” he asked, warm, brotherly concern lacing his words. 

She looked out the large windows to her right, watching rain smear against the glass. “I am fine, Tim,” she said finally, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

Silent for a moment, he coughed and stepped over to her desk. “Gibbs wants you upstairs,” he said gently.

Moments later, McGee ushered her into the observation room. Through the glass she could see an older, salt-and-pepper haired man sitting at the interrogation table, a cup of coffee and a muffin sitting untouched in front of him. His face was downcast, eyes bloodshot and weary, and she knew immediately who she was looking at. 

“So, this is—“

“Her father,” she interrupted McGee, gaze focused on the slumping man.

McGee faltered for a moment, but recovered well; he was getting better at that, growing up, she thought idly, as he skimmed his notepad. “Yes. Joshua Feldman, 58 years old, lawyer in Philadelphia. His wife passed away three years ago from cancer, and Corporal Feldman is— _was_ his only family.”

She leaned a shoulder against the glass, turning her head to McGee. “Gibbs is interviewing?” 

Nodding, McGee sipped from a Starbucks cup; a vaguely spicy scent floated in the dimly lit room. “Got him the coffee and everything. He’ll be up in a minute.”

She glanced back over to Mr. Feldman. “I do not think my father would be so upset, if it were me,” she said quietly, a faint shiver of sadness curling over her. 

Quiet for a moment, McGee stepped towards her. “His loss, then,” he said, warmth coloring his words as he patted her shoulder awkwardly. 

She gave him a faint smile, touched. He ducked his head, face reddening slightly. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He left her alone in the observation room, watching as Feldman sipped from his coffee, jaw working hard under the skin. Grief etched deeply into the lines of his face; she’d never seen such raw emotion in a man before, except perhaps in Gibbs and Tony after Jenny’s death. She had certainly never seen it in her father, or any of the men in her life before coming to NCIS. 

_Except Ari_. 

Ari had always been an open book to her, visibly emotional, with his wide smiles and dark eyes. Happy when he was with his sisters, devastated at Tali’s death, horrified at her own recruitment by Mossad; how he worked as a mole between Hamas and Mossad for so long, she could not fathom.

Except he had not really been a mole. He’d been a monster of their father’s creation, he had said so himself.

With a start, she thought of the photo of the two of them, from when they were children. What had happened to that photo? She remembered taping it to a wall, dressed all in black and waiting to move on Somalia, but after that, nothing. 

The door creaked open, and from the corner of her eye she saw Tony slip in, carrying two coffees, a white paper bag under his arm. “Brought you breakfast,” he said with a grin. “They even had your whole wheat banana nut muffin, so I’d say it’s your lucky day.”

She took a coffee and the paper bag from him, setting both down on the side table. “Thank you. I forgot about breakfast,” she said. 

“Yeah, well, an elephant never forgets,” he said lightly, jabbing a thumb into his chest. 

Raising a brow, she pulled out a couple of napkins and set her muffin and his bagel, thick with cream cheese, on each one. “There is research indicating that elephants do have long term memories, so yes, you are right,” she said as she handed him his bagel.

He gave her an exasperated sort of smile. “It’s just a saying, Ziva.”

She frowned as Gibbs entered the interrogation room and sat across from Mr. Feldman. “I knew that,” she said, holding her coffee close to her chin, breathing in the steam. 

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Feldman,” Gibbs said quietly after a moment.

Feldman nodded bleakly, staring at Gibbs unnervingly. “This is an interrogation room. Am I a suspect?” he said, voice raw.

Gibbs shook his head. “All our conference rooms are booked today.”

The other man rubbed his hands together, as if warding off cold; Ziva shivered in sympathy. “You’ve lost a child, Agent Gibbs?”

Tension thickened around her and Tony as they watched Gibbs’ shoulders stiffen; he nodded slowly, and Feldman smiled sadly. “I can see it now, in people’s eyes. It’s a horrible skill. I just—I can’t believe this,” he trailed off faintly.

“Just need to ask you a few things about Leah,” Gibbs said after a moment, voice gravelly.

Feldman rubbed the back of his neck, straightening his shoulders. “Whatever I can do to help,” he said, voice regaining a semblance of strength.

“You do not need to stay,” she said after a few moments of listening to Gibbs’ gentle questions, Feldman’s choked replies, the beginnings of a headache thudding at her temples. “I am sure Gibbs has things for you to do.”

Tony side-stepped closer to her and nudged his shoulder against hers. “It’s okay. I’m interviewing the boyfriend in a while. Thought you might want some company,” he said lightly.

She sighed, sipping at her coffee. “I hope the toxicology results come back soon,” she murmured, leaning over towards the table to break off a piece of muffin.

“You’re _way_ too worried about this case. It’s stressing me out,” he groused. 

She shot him a glare. “You are exhausting.”

He smirked at her, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s what the women tell me.”

Rolling her eyes, she chewed thoughtfully, eyes trained on the grieving father behind the glass. “She had an extra puncture mark in her arm, not from the IV. And that whole car crash scenario seems off,” she said slowly.

After a moment, she felt the press of his hand at her shoulder blades, his fingers sifting past her wild tangle of hair and rubbing the muscles through her thin shirt; her skin warmed at his touch, face pink. “She looks like you. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers-weird, I get it. But that’s all, Ziva.”

She rolled her shoulders as his fingers touched on a knot at the nape of her neck. “It is not just that. I feel like this is my fault somehow,” she said softly, the fingers on her free hand curled into her palm.

“It’s not,” he said, voice low.

His assurances were usually helpful, but today, it made no difference. But she forced a small smile and a nod for him. His hand slipped down the curve of her spine before floating back to his side; a shiver curled her toes. 

“I’ve got to go get Jake. See you later,” he said, tossing her a grin before sauntering out of the observation room.

*

Jake Biddle looked as she felt; grey and pale, gaze raw and open, sleepless. But she did not have the excuse of loss and grief; all she had was a sense of _wrongness_ that left her wanting.

Tony escorted him into the interrogation room with a warm smile and a cup of coffee. “Sorry about the room, we’re short on space today,” he said lightly, sitting across from him, the broad line of his shoulders directly in her view. 

She watched carefully, a pang echoing deep in her abdomen. Jake’s eyes lay on the tabletop, watching the steam rise from the Styrofoam cup. “S’alright,” he murmured.

Clearing his throat, Tony pulled out his notepad and leaned back in his chair. “You and Corporal Feldman, how long were you together?”

Jake’s shoulders hunched; he visibly curled inward, as if being hit. “Four years in January. We were talking about getting married.”

Guilt crept over her, sliding through her like ice in her veins; she didn’t notice the door to the observation room open. 

“Rough day.”

She breathed in sharply at Gibbs’s voice at her side, glancing at him. “The father is clean,” she said after a moment.

He nodded. “I know.”

Her bones ached as she looked at Jake, his bowed head, the hunched stature. “Mr. Feldman is torn up,” Jake said gruffly, brow deeply lined. “I mean, first his wife, now Leah—“

“You were around for her mother’s death?” Tony asked gently.

Jake nodded. “We’d only been dating a little while, but yeah. Hit her hard, but she was okay. She—she didn’t do this to herself, did she? I mean, she’d been in Iraq, and I’ve read about PTSD, and she seemed fine, but maybe I missed—“

“You didn’t miss anything,” Tony interjected. 

Taking a shuddery breath, Jake rubbed his knuckles. “I shouldn’t have left her,” he muttered.

After a moment, Tony leaned in across the table towards him. “It’s not your fault, Jake,” he said, a soft sort of aching coloring his words. “There’s nothing you could do.”

“But I would have _been_ there,” Jake said hoarsely, eyes wide and red-rimmed. “She wouldn’t have been alone.”

She and Gibbs stood in silence, listening to Jake’s choked words, Tony’s attempts to be soothing. She wanted to cry, but she also wanted to laugh, and scream—anything to get rid of the blame haunting her steps. 

“He reminds me of Tony.”

She looked over at Gibbs; his face was unreadable, jaw tight under the skin. “What do you mean?”

He looked at her, raising a brow. “Looks just like Tony did after you left.”

Flushing, she pursed her lips tightly. “I do not know what you mean,” she said quietly, fingers curling into fists at her sides. 

“Yeah, you do. And whatever it is you need to figure out, just do it. I need you both back to normal,” he said shortly. “You’re dancing around each other like teenagers.”

She huffed impatiently, crossing her arms. “It is not that simple,” she muttered. 

He cuffed her on the back of the head, the first time since before Michael’s death. She winced, glaring at him. “I don’t care, David. Figure it out,” he said. “Somehow, he forced your father into telling us where you were, and no one goes up against the Director of Mossad like that. Not unless there’s something behind it.”

With that, he left her alone in the room, the ringing in her ears mixing with Jake’s ragged voice.

*

Gibbs’ words haunted the edges of her mind, and she tried valiantly not to look at Tony anymore than she needed to. She’d been terse with him since Jake Biddle’s interview, and after three repeated invites to lunch (and three dismissals), he finally just left her be, though her chest ached at the shadowed, guarded look in his eyes. 

In the late afternoon, she and the team (Ducky included) assembled in Abby’s lab. Abby looked positively gleeful, which Ziva could only take as good news. She hung back near the counter with Tony, the only other person in the room who didn’t seem to know what was going on (other than Gibbs, but no one was going to tell him that), but she kept to her side of the counter, looking straight ahead.

Gibbs peered at the plasma screen. “What am I looking at, Abs?”

“The cause of death: snake venom,” she said with a wide smile.

There was a beat of silence between all of them as she looked back and forth between them, eyes sparkling. She was practically bouncing in her platforms. 

“Ah, of course!” Ducky exclaimed, narrowing his eyes at the screen. “That explains the swelling and subcutaneous bruising, and the puncture mark! It must have been injected!”

Rain pattered hard against the small oval windows, and Ziva smoothed her curls over her shoulder unconsciously. “What kind of snake?” she asked. 

“ _Bitis arietans_. The African Puff Adder,” Abby replied proudly.

“Someone brought a snake into the hospital?” Tony said with a frown, face crunching into itself. “Gross.”

“Ditto,” McGee chimed in, both men shuddering.

Well, that was too interesting to pass up. “You do not like snakes?” Ziva asked lightly. 

Tony grimaced. “The best and bravest of men hate snakes, Zee-vah. Just take Indiana Jones.”

The name did not ring a bell, and she knew her face showed it, because both McGee and Tony shared the same horrified look. “A travesty,” Tony muttered.

“How didn’t anyone _notice_?” Gibbs barked, crossing his arms. “Feldman must have been in pain from the bite.”

Ziva watched with a slight sense of discomfort as Ducky’s eyes widened in realization. “She was on pain medications for the leg. She could’ve had minor symptoms, but she probably thought nothing of it,” he said, brow furrowed.

“The incubation period is about 24 hours, depending on the dose,” Abby added, pigtails swinging. 

“She was in the hospital for almost two days when she died,” Ziva murmured, brow furrowing.

Gibbs wheeled around and began walking out of the lab. “I want background checks on all of the staff that came in contact with Feldman. Let’s roll.”

*

Eyes heavy with strain, Ziva leaned back in her office chair, positioned in front of the plasma screen. Though the quality of the security tapes were good, she would not recommend watching four hours straight of hospital surveillance, especially by one’s self. McGee was off with Abby working on Feldman’s car, Gibbs was _somewhere_ , and she had no idea where Tony had gone, which unfortunately reminded her of all the _other_ times he would up and disappear, which reminded her of Jeanne, which reminded her of Jenny—

In short, a thickness had lodged itself in her throat, the familiar tingle of guilt lingering in her limbs, and she was suddenly hungry. Her half-eaten muffin was over twelve hours past, and the knot in her stomach had loosened just enough to allow a rumble of hunger. 

“Brought food.”

She turned in her chair, the joints squeaking, and watched as Tony set a brown paper bag down on his desk, and began pulling out cartons of Chinese. His hair shone wetly in the dim office lights, his shirt flecked with rain. She was tired of the patter of rain. 

“Anything yet?” he asked, handing her a carton and a pair of chopsticks. 

She opened the flaps and breathed in chicken lo mein with a faint smile. “No, and I do not think there will be anything from the tapes,” she said as he plopped into his own chair and rolled himself towards her. 

“Gut feeling?” he teased, poking at his sweet-and-sour chicken. 

She shrugged, chewing quietly. She wanted to say yes, and have him tease her about her super-secret-spy senses, but the senses in question were all out of whack. 

They ate in relative silence (Tony was a loud chewer, there was nothing to help for it) for a little while, huddled together in the space between Gibbs’s and McGee’s desks. She stole some of his chicken, he sneaked some of her noodles, for a brief moment, it was all the way it used to be, before she became that _other_ Ziva, the one who didn’t talk to her best friend, who ignored her “spy-senses” in favor of a less-than-satisfying personal relationship with Michael, a man who hadn’t known her anymore.

“I am forgetting things,” she said abruptly, staring into her noodles. 

His chopsticks paused mid-grasp. “Like what?” he asked finally, doing a half-decent job of masking his confusion.

She poked at a carrot slice, wrinkling her nose. “My necklace. I did not realize it was gone until yesterday.”

“You’ve been recovering from a rough summer. Maybe you should give yourself a break,” he said gently. 

She shook her head. “I am an observer, my mind is my best asset—“

“Oh, and not the nineteen uses of a paper clip for murder?” he interrupted dryly.

At that, she looked up and glared. “If I am not all together up here,” she began hotly, pointing at her head, “I am not myself. I am not the agent I should be.”

His eyes reflected green in the dim lights, soft and wide. His face was an open book; the worry and affection layered under his skin scared her. “What can I do to help?” he asked. 

“I do not know where to begin,” she said glumly. “I just want to be back to normal again.”

Leaning back in his chair, he poked around his chicken, eyes never leaving her. “If you think something’s not right on this case, I’ll back you up,” he said finally, voice low. 

She choked out a half-laugh. “Even if I have no proof?”

His mouth twitched into a faint half-smile. “You’re proof enough for me, David.”

Blood thrumming against her skin, she looked away, an odd sort of heat flushing her neck and collarbones. “I am sorry for being cool to you, earlier,” she said after a moment.

“Yeah, well. I’ll recover,” he said with a shrug.

Her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth, words jumbling in her throat. In all of her languages, she could not configure a way to say what she needed, what she _wanted_. 

“Do you remember the war game, and our fight in the elevator?” she asked finally, voice ringing thinly in the air.

In the quiet, she could feel more than hear his slow intake of breath. “Yes,” he said after a moment, voice low. 

Hair prickling on the back of her neck, she looked up to meet his eyes. “I said I was tired of pretending. I was not talking about the mole,” she said evenly, watching with a small sense of dread as his eyes widened, mouth falling ajar. 

It took a lot to shock Tony, and it seemed she succeeded. 

“Am I interrupting date night?”

Both she and Tony straightened up immediately as Gibbs hovered over them, brow creased with worry. “Brought you dinner, Boss,” Tony said, pushing himself over to his desk with the heels of his feet. She inhaled deeply and leaned back, clutching at her lo mein with faintly trembling fingers. 

“Abby found a syringe in the car,” Gibbs said as he sat at his desk, poking through the carton Tony handed him. She noticed his hand was shaking just the slightest, as well. 

“From the poison,” she finished slowly. 

Gibbs nodded once. “I’d bet on it.”

“And they just left it there? Careless,” Tony said, sitting next to her once more. 

Goosebumps crawled over her arms. “Not if they wanted us to find it,” she said, listening to the hard fall of rain. 

An odd tension settled between the three of them. She could see the question on their faces: how could this really be happening to them _again_? 

“This is like deja vu,” Tony said quietly after a long moment. 

Her mouth thinned; she glanced at him, his stance stiff in the chair. “Ari?”

Face furrowed, he nodded. She looked over at Gibbs, whose eyes were fixed on her, gaze clear and unreadable. “We’re missing something,” he said darkly.

Stomach knotting, she rubbed her right hand, thumb aching. “I know,” she said finally, eyes locked on Gibbs. She took a deep breath, gut wringing against her insides. “I need to talk to Mossad again.”

His face didn’t change, not even a twitch in the mouth. “I’ll get Vance to call Director David. We’ll have MTAC in the morning,” he said gruffly, setting down his dinner and picking up his phone. 

She rolled back to her desk and set her food down, appetite gone. “I need to get some air,” she murmured, standing up. 

“You and Tony go check on Abby,” Gibbs said before turning to the phone, speaking in lowered tones. 

The walk to the elevator was silent; Tony let her enter first, and took the side closest to the panel. As the elevator hummed with movement, he reached out and flipped the Emergency Stop switch. Her toes curled in her shoes, and she leaned against the side of the elevator, watching him. 

“You think your dad will help?” he asked finally, crossing his arms.

She chewed on the inside of her lip, raising a brow. “He has helped before, when it comes to me. How else did you get my whereabouts in Somalia?”

His jaw clenched under the skin, mouth tightening. “I got it out of him,” he said shortly.

“How?” she pressed, stepping towards him. “He does not like to share.”

“I just—I just _did_ , okay?” he said harshly, the line of his body tight with tension, but the heat in his eyes was not anger; it was something else all together that unnerved her. “Does it matter how I did?”

She licked her lips, the odd tremble back in her fingertips. Foreign warmth settled in her middle, stretching out towards her spine. “I guess not,” she said softly. Her chest tightened as she watched his body slowly relax, his face loosen against its bones. “Perhaps you can work your magic on him again tomorrow.”

He raised a brow, lips curving faintly. “You want me there?”

“I do not want to talk to him alone,” she said, closing the distance between their bodies. Her arm brushed against his side as she restarted the elevator, she could feel the warmth rising from his skin. “To be frank, I do not want to talk to him at all.”

He grasped her wrist gently as she pulled back, the elevator jolting under their feet. “Then I’ll be there,” he said, voice firm and strong. 

She smiled slightly at him, shoulders relaxing. “Thanks.”

The hand on her wrist squeezed gently before letting go as the elevator shuddered to a stop. “And I wasn’t talking about the mole, either,” he said as the doors slid open, Abby’s voice carrying through the garage. 

She had not been expecting _that_. Her skin flushed hot as she stared at him. “What?”

He smiled wide and slow, teeth bright. “You heard me,” he said as he walked out into the noisy garage.

She bit her lip on a grin as she followed him out, all sorts of startled. How typically Tony.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

The rest of the team left for home by midnight. Both Gibbs and Tony tried to force Ziva to leave, but she evaded and ducked their insistence with her usual aplomb. It was easier just to stay where she felt completely safe, in the confines of their pit, rather than be alone in her still-too-new apartment. Instead, she caught bits and pieces of sleep at her desk. The crick in her neck reminded her of the early days with Mossad, the missions without clean clothes or any sleep at all, when she hadn’t thought life could be any different. 

Now that she was older, she allowed herself to miss the comfort of a bed, the pulse of warm water on her shoulder blades, and she didn’t feel guilty about it.

The rain continued all through the night and into the morning, when the day dawned grey and wet. She stared out the windows, her slowly-drying hair settling heavily on the nape of her neck. As she perched on the corner of her desk, hands clasped tightly together on her knee, she wished more than ever that she felt like her old self. 

Certainly, she had moments of clarity, and she felt capable as an agent once more. Even the interaction with Tony the night before, though revealing, had left her feeling more settled and calm, as if the trust had finally been re-solidified between them. But in having to talk to her father, even from a safe distance of six thousand miles, she realized she was not all the way there yet, and she didn’t like it. 

Her limbs felt sluggish and heavy, dampness settling into her bones, and she desperately wanted some coffee, but it was nearly time to go into MTAC, and she didn’t have time to waste. She didn’t even notice Gibbs and Tony as they arrived, but when Gibbs shoved a hot Starbucks cup into her hand, she could not help her smile of thanks. 

“Thought I told you to go home,” Gibbs said, settling at his desk. 

She breathed in the dark roast, her toes curling. “Do not worry, I slept.”

“Did I tell you to sleep?” he retorted.

Tony sat himself on the other corner of her desk, tilting his head. His face was unreadable, and she frowned. “What?”

His mouth curled upwards, eyes moving over her face. “At least you’re prettier than Jennifer Garner,” he said finally. 

Eyebrows raised, she glanced at Gibbs. “Should I know what that means?”

Gibbs rolled his eyes as Tony grinned at her. “ _Alias_. It’s a television show about a super-spy—Jennifer Garner—and her adventures. She has a tortured relationship with her father, who runs her agency,” he said. “By the end of the series—”

“They reconcile?” she interjected, rolling her eyes. “My life is not a television show, Tony, and I do not think you will see a happy ending today.”

He raised his hands defensively, eyes wide and bright. “It’s a good TV show! That’s all I’m saying!”

She batted at his hands, wanting to be annoyed but finding herself merely amused. “Perhaps I’ll watch it someday,” she said, sipping her coffee. 

“Shouldn’t you get up there?” Gibbs asked pointedly. 

She looked at the clock on the far wall with a silent sigh. “Yes. Time to face the tune,” she muttered, sliding off her desk and clutching her coffee close. 

“Face the music,” Tony corrected, eyes oddly soft. “Still want me up there?”

“Of course. I would not want to deprive you of the chance to see my father once more,” she deadpanned, nodding at Gibbs. “I will try to be brief.”

“Do what you need to,” Gibbs replied brusquely before turning back to his computer. 

Tony grimaced and followed her to the stairs, glancing upwards. “Big Brother’s watching,” he muttered near her ear as they climbed the stairs, his hand grazing her hip. 

She looked up to see Director Vance standing at the top of the stairs, looking perturbed. “Wonderful,” she murmured, nodding to him as they passed. His eyes followed them all the way down the way towards MTAC, and Tony shuddered next to her. 

“Something about him just rubs me the wrong way,” he said darkly as she leaned into the retina scan. 

The doors clicked open and they strolled inside. “I do not like that he is close to my father,” she said, eyes adjusting to the dimly-lit room. One woman sat at the panels of computers, headset on and awaiting them expectantly. It was cooler than the office floor, much like Abby’s lab, due to the computers, she assumed.

“Can’t imagine why,” Tony murmured, taking a seat in the front row as she stood closer to the middle of the room and nodded at the young woman. 

The transmission crackled, and she took the moment to glance back at him. “This most likely will not go well,” she warned. 

He shrugged, an unkind smile curling the corners of his mouth. “I’m prepared for the worst.” 

She took another long swallow of coffee and faced the screen, spine stiffening as her father’s smooth, unreadable face appeared. 

“ _Shalom_ , Ziva.”

“ _Shalom_ , Director,” she said evenly, cradling her cup to the hollow of her chest, a warm, comforting press. “I need information on the mole in Mossad.”

Eli David’s poker face was nearly as good as Gibbs’s. _Nearly_. “What, no pleasantries? I am glad to see you in good health.”

With considerable effort, she bit back her retort of _no thanks to you_. Tony, however, muttered it, and she wanted to laugh at the convergence of their thoughts. “I need the information on the mole,” she said instead, caffeine hitting her bloodstream; she could feel the pick-up of speed in her mind. 

“As Officer Bashan told you, there is no mole. I do not know where you received your information—“

“I received my information from the man who tortured me for two weeks,” she cut in icily. “He had information that only Mossad had about my private life, including photos that your officers here in DC took of me.”

His lips thinned; she heard Tony rise from his seat behind her. “There is no mole, Ziva,” he repeated firmly. 

Bile curdled in her stomach, and she took a deep breath. “You are impeding an investigation, _Director_ , and I—“

“There is no mole because Akil was ex-Mossad.”

Really, she should have been more surprised than she was. The feeling left her fingers, and she could barely feel her face, but somewhere deep inside, she was not surprised. In fact, it almost made sense.

Tony, however, nearly exploded from his shock.

“I’m sorry?” he spoke up from behind her, voice high with disbelief.

David’s gaze flickered over to the side. “Well, Agent DiNozzo. A pleasure to see you once more,” he said, a brittleness to his voice. 

“I’m sure,” Tony said acidly. “That bastard was Mossad?”

“As I said, ex-Mossad.” David glanced down, lifting a file up to his eyes. “Akil Inbari was recruited to Mossad in 1992. He served as an undercover agent in Hamas and even attempted to infiltrate Al-Qaeda. In late 2006, one of our retaliatory strikes into the Gaza Strip killed his father, who was Arab, and he quit Mossad, went rogue.”

The feeling returned to her limbs, blood rushing everywhere at once, and she snapped her eyes to her father. “No one quits Mossad,” she said evenly. 

He flashed a tiny curl of his lip at her. “Well. Perhaps it was a sanctioned leave.”

“You knew who this guy was,” Tony said flatly.

“Yes. And we knew of his growing resentment towards Mossad after his father’s death, and it was no surprise to us when he left,” David replied easily.

Ziva waved a hand impatiently. “Why did he have my file?”

“Anyone with a high-enough clearance could see it. We like all our agents to be on the same page.”

Tony snorted. “The same page being let’s get my daughter killed. Yeah. Makes sense.”

She shot him a look. “You are not helping,” she hissed. 

He raised his brows, face clearly telegraphing his ire, but he crossed his arms and remained silent. Taking a deep breath, she faced her father’s larger-than-life image once more. “If you knew he had information on me, why did you not let me know?” she asked. 

David shrugged elegantly. “We had no idea where he was until Michael worked with him undercover earlier this year. Once we saw his usefulness, we wanted to take advantage. Any information he might have had on you was inconsequential in the larger picture.”

_Perfect_. She shut her eyes and sighed heavily as Tony made a growl-like noise, rumbling deep from the back of throat. “Michael? Michael _Rivkin_?” he repeated, voice laced with disbelief.

“Yes, Michael Rivkin,” David replied coolly. “He should ring a bell, Agent DiNozzo. You killed him.”

Steel-cold resolve slipped through her, and she jutted her chin up, meeting her father’s gaze. “Why did you do nothing about Inbari?”

“Michael befriended him in hopes of getting intelligence on his cell. We wanted to use him,” he replied flatly. “It would have worked, if Michael had not died.”

Tony’s entire body radiated tension near her, and she reached out to grasp his arm, to silence him. “And you think he escaped from Somalia,” she said. 

“Stranger things have happened,” David replied coolly. 

“But _how_ do you know?” she pressed. 

He dropped the file and leaned back in his chair easily. “We got a hit on one of his aliases entering the U.S. about a month ago, but there’s been no activity since. Someone else may be using it, we are not sure. We have been busy cleaning up after Michael’s sudden loss.”

At Tony’s sharp intake of breath, she dug her fingers into his arm, the muscles straining against her fingertips. “That is what Michael’s mission in Somalia was about,” she said slowly. “You knew Inbari had intel on me, but you sent me anyway,” she said slowly.

David’s gaze narrowed, dark and cold. “You were my top agent, Ziva. Why would I send someone else?”

“That was a goddamn death trap—“ Tony exclaimed, horrified wonder coloring his words. 

“She is Mossad,” her father interrupted coldly. “She did as she was directed.”

Tony breathed in through his nose, a low growl in his throat, and she clutched his arm harder still. “It’s all right, Tony,” she said quietly, looking at her father. “I will need Inbari’s aliases.”

Pausing for a moment, David nodded. “I will have them sent immediately.” 

She nodded once. “Thank you for your time, Director.”

He looked at her carefully for a moment; her shoulders tightened and straightened in an automatic reaction. “I know you filled out green card papers, Ziva.”

“And?” she said flatly. “I cannot imagine it came as a surprise.”

There was an odd sort of sadness in his eyes, but not born of personal reasons; he mourned her loss to Mossad, not to his life. “No. Just reinforcement, that I do not know you as well as I once did.”

She wanted to fling her coffee at the screen, but restrained herself. “After what happened with Ari, I could have told you that.”

His eyes hardened. “ _Shalom_ ,” he said, nodding off screen. 

The video went to static, and she relaxed her grip on Tony. He immediately groaned in pain, shaking his arm vigorously. “What the _hell_ , Ziva?” he exclaimed. “What the hell was that?”

The puzzle pieces clicked together inside, and she could not help the relief sweeping through her. She felt _normal_ again, like the super-secret-ninja-spy everyone expected of her, what she expected of herself. She almost wanted to send her father a thank-you note, for snapping her fully back into reality.

Smiling slightly, she sipped her cooling coffee, adrenalin beginning a slow course through her limbs. “That was my father disowning me.”

He rubbed at his forearm, frowning down at the small half-moon imprints from her nails. “Yeah, well, good fucking riddance,” he muttered. 

She turned to him, tilting her head. “He does not like you at all,” she said lightly. “How did you get him to tell you where I was?”

Jaw tight, he glared at her. “We’re going to do this again?”

“You can’t blame me for being curious,” she teased, the anticipation trickling through her unfamiliar but familiar. 

He stared at her, face furrowed. “Damnit, why aren’t you bothered by all this?”

She shrugged once, walking past him towards the door out of MTAC. “Should I be?”

From behind, he let out a loud, abrasive breath. “You’re the craziest woman I know,” he muttered, and despite the information congealing in her brain, she couldn’t help but laugh.

*

Gibbs sat frozen in mid-sip, coffee pressed to his lips.

Planting her hands on her hips, Ziva cocked her head. “Well?”

“Well? Well _what_?” Tony muttered from behind her, slinking at his desk. “I think we should kick your dad’s ass.”

“Should’ve thought of that while you were there, Tony” McGee muttered, eyes wide. “Your dad _knew_ who he was? And sent you after him anyway?”

She shrugged, still looking at Gibbs. “I do not understand why you are surprised. He made me my own brother’s control officer.”

“Yeah, still not over that one, either,” McGee replied uneasily, rubbing his hands together. 

“That is hardly the important part of the conversation,” she added. “Akil Inbari may be alive, and if he is, he is in this country, and probably coming after us.”

“Long shot,” Tony piped up, face blank.

With a sigh, she went to her desk. “He had been profiling me here,” she said testily. “So his cell must have had people in Washington.”

“Why would you think they were profiling you?” McGee asked, brow furrowed. 

“Director David informed me. Besides, Akil knew things about my life here, details that no one else knew, except Mossad,” she replied distractedly, gaze locked onto Tony’s as she leaned on her desk. “And not even Mossad knew some of the things they talked to me about.”

Tony’s jaw tightened. “We killed them all,” he said through his teeth. 

She rubbed her temple, trying to avoid the headache she could feel coming on. “It does not make sense, not to have operatives everywhere. Especially if they are after NCIS intel,” she said. “They were better organized than that.”

“You think they’ve got people still here,” McGee said slowly.

She shrugged. “It is not out of the question.”

“What does this have to do with our case?” Gibbs asked, startling all three of them. His fingers clenched tightly around his coffee, knuckles white.

“Feldman was killed in the room I had been in, she was Jewish, though lapsed, and she was poisoned with venom from a snake whose natural climate is the region around Somalia,” she said evenly. “The events are not coincidences.”

Gibbs cleared his throat. “McGee, run the aliases Mossad sent over, see if there’s activity. Ziva, get down to Abby’s lab, she’s got something for us. Tony, with me.”

The dark look on Gibbs’ face was enough to get her moving. Tony and McGee gave her identical dark looks as she hurried out of the pit.

*

The moment Ziva appeared in Abby’s lab, Abby pounced on her, lips pursed into a pout. 

“Something’s up with you and Tony, isn’t there?” she said, betrayal curling through her tone. 

Planting her hands on her hips, Ziva lifted her brows. “Why would you say that?”

Abby scoffed, pigtails curling in at the ends, near her jaw. “Like I couldn’t tell. You guys were eying each other in the garage the whole time you were there.”

“We are always _eying_ each other, are we not? That is what you and McGee think,” Ziva replied easily. 

Sighing, Abby wheeled around on her platforms and curved around the counter, going to her computers. “Yeah, but it was _different_ eying. It was hot-and-bothered eying. It was—“

“It was not any of that, Abby,” Ziva interjected gently, following and standing at her side. “There is nothing up with Tony and myself.”

The clear disappointment in Abby’s eyes struck her. “I don’t know—I just thought that maybe this time would be the _one_ —“

Ziva shook her head, grasping Abby’s elbow. “What? What are you talking about?” she asked, bewilderment slipping over her. 

With a cursory glance at the still-running fingerprint on her screen, Abby faced Ziva once more, the serious set of her mouth troubling. “You guys always get _so_ close, but something happens to mess it up, and I thought that with you almost dying and stuff—and as I’ve said before, I’m really glad you didn’t die—I thought you two would finally get it together,” she rambled, voice rising and falling in pitch. 

Ziva blinked, mouth slightly ajar. “I am not sure what to say,” she said finally, leaning a hip on the tabletop.

“Well, a simple _I love you_ might help,” Abby said cheerily. 

Hesitating, Ziva bit her lip. “Well, Abby, you know I love you, almost like another sister—” 

“Not to me! To _Tony_ ,” Abby retorted, throwing up her hands. “Both of you are stupid.”

“Is now really the time for this?” Ziva asked quickly, heart pounding hard against her ribs. Yes, she felt back to normal, but she was not ready for that amount of normal yet. 

Abby pouted once more. “Guess not. But! The minute—no, the _second_ something is up between you two—“

“I will tell you, I promise,” she said quickly, trying to quell the flush rising on her neck. “What do you have for us?”

Abby grinned widely and turned back to her computer, clacking on the keyboard with flying fingers. “Fingerprint match is still going. I’ve opened up the search to foreign nationals recently entering the country, but it’s taking time.”

Ziva wrinkled her nose, computer code flying past her vision. “The syringe?”

“Contained the same snake venom that killed Leah Feldman. Seems really amateur, just to leave it there,” Abby said, eyes fixing on her. “Unless, you know, the guy didn’t just _leave it there_.”

“Something you want to know, Abby?” she asked lightly.

“Are we being targeted again? I mean, I’ve been shot at before, I can handle it, but I don’t really like it, and I don’t want anything to happen to any of you, it’s been such a bad year already—“

Ziva grabbed Abby’s hands, holding them tightly. “It’s all right,” she said firmly. “Nothing is going to happen to anyone, and no one is going to shoot at you.”

Abby breathed out in a short huff, nodding once. “Got it.”

Letting go of her hands, Ziva nodded in return, a small smile playing at her lips. “Good.” 

The computer trumpeted at them, and Abby squealed. “I’ve done it again! Here’s our guy.”

Ziva glanced at the picture, tracing the unfamiliar nose, the beard covering the jaw, the beady eyes. “It is not him,” she said softly, superimposing Akil’s face on the computer screen with the mental image burned into her brain. 

“Alam Salif, Egyptian national, here on an academic visa,” Abby rattled off. “I’ll send McGee the info and the last known address.”

Taking a deep breath, Ziva nodded. “Thanks, Abby.”

She turned to leave, but Abby’s hand on her elbow stopped her. “You guys be careful, with the guns and stuff, okay?”

She quirked her mouth into a half-smile. “We will.”

Abby’s smile, though shaky, still lit up the room. “Good.”

*

Salif’s address led them to a low-income part of Manassas. Ziva sat in the front seat of the sedan as Gibbs drove, glancing at the sidewalks as they passed through the neighborhoods. The rain had cleared, but the late-morning skies were heavy with clouds and the threat of more rain. It made her scars ache just thinking about it.

“So, this guy wasn’t _the_ guy, right?” McGee asked for the twentieth time since they left the Navy Yard.

She rolled her eyes, an assured hand settled on the butt of her gun. “No, it was not.”

Tony scoffed. “Told you I killed him.”

Turning her neck, she looked at the two of them sitting in the back. McGee looked anxious but steady, while Tony looked as the weather was, dark and stormy. “That does not mean he did not still get away. You and the Seals did not stay to check the building,” she said patiently.

“Nice way of saying thanks. We were trying to get you out of there alive!” he retorted.

“I am not disregarding your efforts,” she snapped back. “I am merely saying it is possible Akil got away! You said you only killed one man upstairs, and I know there were two.”

“Are you sure you’re remembering things right?” McGee asked quietly. “It was a hard time for you.”

“I remember everything,” she said curtly, facing front once more.

“One too many blows to the head,” Tony muttered.

Growling low in his throat, Gibbs pulled up to the curb across from the apartment and slammed on the brakes hard, jolting them all forward. “Do I look like a therapist?” he barked at them all. 

McGee cleared his throat. “Uh, no, Boss.”

“Then everyone shut up!” Gibbs said darkly, turning off the car and getting out without another word.

She wrinkled her nose, getting out of the car quickly. “I do not see why you are so upset,” she hissed at Tony as they crossed the street, pushing her NCIS hat from her line of vision. 

“Oh, gee, let me explain,” he whispered back angrily. “The guy who tortured you is still alive and hunting you down! Which part of that isn’t supposed to be upsetting?”

“Do not be so dramatic,” she said, following him inside the building. The apartment was on the first floor, so they did not have far to go. 

“Nice to see you back to your unfeeling spy self,” he muttered, taking his position at Gibbs’s back. She glared at him as she knelt beside McGee, the ache in her chest sharp and pulsing. 

“NCIS!” Gibbs called through the door, waiting a moment before nodding to her. She stood and kicked down the door, force jarring through her bones.

Leading the way, she kept her gun level, eyes sweeping the living room. “Clear,” she said softly, moving forward into the kitchen. A few dishes lay in the sink, a box of cereal out on the counter, but it was relatively tidy. 

“Bedroom and bath are clear,” McGee called from the other room. 

Sighing, she holstered her gun and planted her hands on her hips, surveying the living room. “Looks lived-in,” she said as Gibbs picked his way through the living room, kicking aside jeans and t-shirts. 

“Yeah, you could say that,” he muttered. 

McGee hurried into the room, a laptop in one hand and a memory stick in the other. “Jackpot,” he said, beaming.

Gibbs nodded at him. “Bag it, you and Abby can work on them.”

Tony pushed aside magazines on the coffee table, brow furrowed deeply. “Uh—Ziva?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not now,” she muttered, sniffing the corn flakes. 

“Seriously, look.”

His somber tone caught her attention, and she glanced over to where he stood in the living room. “What?”

Using his coat sleeve, he lifted up a wrinkled, tattered photo, clear fold lines etched into the bright surface. “This is you,” he said quietly.

Pulse skipping against her skin, she stepped forward and caught the photo in her fingers, Ari’s wide smile staring up at her, his skinny arm around her bony shoulders. As usual, she could not remember being that young, ever. 

“It is me,” she said finally, touching the shiny paper gently. “I had it with me, in Somalia. They took it from me, I think.”

Silence lay thick as fog between them all. She had never felt so _hunted_ before, after being the hunter for so long.

“You okay?” Tony asked quietly.

She looked up and nodded, handing it back to him. “It needs a bag,” she said simply, swallowing down the lump in her throat.

He nodded slowly. Behind her, McGee pulled out his phone. “I’ll call for a team to come out and get the rest of this stuff,” he said.

Her eyes trailed over the carpet, a trail of mud catching her gaze. “Still damp. Recent,” she said, following it along to the closet near the door. “It is smudged. Not real footprints. Looks like the heel of someone’s shoe, like they were dragged, maybe.”

“You need gloves, Ziva,” Tony said behind her, his voice oddly distant.

“I think someone is in here,” she murmured, pulling her coat sleeve over her hand and grasping the doorknob. 

Fabric rustled as Tony pulled out his gun behind her. “Go ahead.”

Taking a deep breath, she opened the closet door. Promptly, a body fell out on top of her, knocking her to the ground, taking the breath from her. Open, beady eyes, empty with death, stared too close into her gaze, and she struggled beneath the heavy body as Tony yelled for Gibbs. Her hat fell off her head, pressure pushing down on her middle, her ribs ached with effort for a deep breath.

“I am okay,” she said, shuddering as they lifted the body off of her and onto the floor. Tony grasped her arms and heaved her up to her feet, letting her steady herself against him. She bent at the waist slightly, holding onto his jacket with white knuckles.

“Well, he looks familiar,” he said grimly, a hand steady between her shoulders.

She shuddered once more as Gibbs and McGee backed away from the prone, dead form of Alam Salif, who lay prostrate on the floor. 

“Better give Ducky a call too, I guess,” McGee said after a moment. 

Gibbs huffed, straightening his hat on his head. “Ya think, McGee?”

Sighing, she straightened herself. “What a day,” she murmured. 

Tony snorted. “And it’s only lunchtime.”

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

It was late in the afternoon before the team was done canvassing the apartment and they returned to the Navy Yard. Gibbs went down with Ducky in Autopsy, looking at the new body, while McGee took the computer and memory stick, along with the bagged and tagged items, down to Abby. Ziva made a beeline for her desk, feeling the beginnings of a headache at her temples. After a few moments, Tony followed, carrying their leftover Chinese from the night before. She opened her eyes at the smell, raising a brow at him. 

“Abby let me keep it in her fridge,” he said by way of explanation, dragging his chair over to her desk. “And I’m eating with you, so don’t yell at me.”

“I was not going to,” she said with a sigh, tugging off her standard-issue jacket and draping it over her chair. “This has become ridiculous,” she added, sitting down and grabbing her leftover lo mein.

“Which part?” he asked grimly, leaning back in his chair with an open carton and a fork. 

“All of it,” she said, pulling her cap from her head and shaking out her hair. “Are you going to tell me why you were so nasty earlier?”

He sighed. “Do I have a choice?”

“Or you could tell me how you got the information out of my father,” she offered slyly, smoothing her hair over her shoulders. 

Grimacing, he chewed loudly on his chicken. “Neither sounds appealing. What’s behind curtain number three?”

She kicked his shin lightly. “Those are your choices.”

He continued eating, watching her carefully. Her skin flushed faintly, and she looked down into her noodles, smoothing down her curls. “Staring at me was not one of the curtains,” she said finally, smiling at McGee as he passed them on his way to his desk.

Tony cleared his throat and set down his carton, hands resting comfortably on his stomach. “You don’t even get what that means, do you?”

“No, but that is not the point,” she said. 

Rolling his eyes, he looked down at his hands. “What can I say, David? If something happened to you, then McGeek would be my partner. You don’t want that to happen to me, do you?” 

She smiled slightly. “If you are worried, you could just say so.”

“DiNozzos don’t _worry_ ,” he scoffed.

“Fine,” she said easily. “I promise nothing will happen to me.”

He met her gaze, grinning that familiar toothy smile. “Course it won’t. You’ve got me on your six.”

Shaking her head, she ate her noodles with gusto as the mail guy—Brian, that was his name—came circling around. The young kid left envelopes for Tony and Gibbs, and then retreated, glancing at her with a skittered gaze. 

“Brian is scared of me,” she said after a moment.

Tony chuckled, wheeling back over to his desk. “Can’t imagine why.”

“All men are scared of you, Ziva,” McGee piped up from the corner as he clacked away at his computer.

“Even you?” she asked.

“You can kill me with a paper clip, of course I am,” he replied with a small grin.

Tony picked up a plain white envelope from his desk, holding it loosely in his fingertips. “I hate mail,” he muttered sourly. 

“Looks harmless,” she said, leaning back in her chair once more, eyes fixed on her food.

Paper crinkled at Tony’s desk; the quiet jangle of metal filtered through her ears. “Someone sending you jewelry?” she teased. 

“This isn’t funny, Ziva,” he said, voice deadly serious. 

She glanced over, and immediately shock flooded her, bringing the headache to the front of her forehead. The gold of her Star of David necklace glinted dully at her, dangling from Tony’s outstretched fingers. 

“Where did you get that?” she asked faintly, a shiver running through her limbs. A memory flashed across her line of vision, the tearing of the necklace from her skin, nearly cutting into her neck with the force. 

McGee’s fingers slowed as Tony met her eyes, face unreadable. “From the mail. Do you get why I hate it now?” he asked tersely. 

Standing, she swallowed hard and walked over to his desk, leaning over. “He took this from me,” she murmured. She could see flecks of copper staining the chain—no, not copper. That was—

“I think that’s blood,” Tony said quietly.

All she could do was nod, mouth thinning. Tony clenched his fist and tossed the necklace back into the envelope. “We need to get it to Abby, for testing,” he said as he rounded his desk. 

“I’ll take it,” McGee said quickly, striding past her. It felt as if dust and sand were grinding in her lungs and throat, making it hard to breathe normally; she gripped the edge of Tony’s desk tightly. His hand rested between her shoulder blades. 

“I think it might be appropriate to worry now,” she said after a moment, forcing a thin levity to her voice.

“I’d rather kill this guy,” he said firmly, fingers a comforting press on her skin. “Hopefully he left prints, and I’ll get a second chance.”

She cracked her neck, took a deep breath and straightened herself up. “His focus on me is unusual,” she said.

“Well, you’re the one who got away.”

“It is more than that,” she said, moving away back towards her desk, trying not to miss the warmth of his hand as it fell from her back. “He must want something from NCIS. He would not use his whole cell for an elaborate plot to kill me.”

Tony pursed his lips into a tight grin that didn’t reach his eyes, leaning against his desk. “Ziva, I think it would take the whole cell to _capture_ you, let alone kill you.”

She rubbed her temple, blood thudding hard against the thin skin. . Her bones felt like lead in her body, heavy and unyielding. “I think I need a dog-nap, or something,” she said tiredly

“Cat-nap, actually. You should go down to the lab, shut your eyes. Abby won’t mind,” he said. 

“Gibbs will,” she said wryly. 

He stood up and walked over, taking her by the shoulders and propelling her towards the elevator. “Just go. I’ll talk to him.”

Craning her neck, she gave him the once-over. “You are being much too nice,” she said. 

“Take advantage while you can,” he teased, though his eyes were still dark and somber. “Go on, Ninja-Girl.”

She smiled slightly and got into the elevator without another word. He stayed as the doors slowly shut, the look in his eyes sending a shiver right down to her bones. The memory of his disappearing gaze did not leave her, even when Abby welcomed her with open arms and set her up on the floor of her office with a blanket and Bert the Hippopotamus as her pillow.

*

An hour later, Ziva opened her eyes, lying on the cool floor with Bert squashed under her cheek, and found Gibbs and McGee towered above her, heads bowed over her as if in prayer in some weird monastery. She blinked and yawned, sitting up with a jolt. 

“Taking a turn at Sleeping Beauty, Ziva?” Gibbs said dryly. 

She rubbed her eyes and accepted McGee’s helping hand up to her feet. “Sorry,” she murmured, heat rising on her skin.

Gibbs looked sour for a moment before his eyes softened, and he clasped her shoulder for a moment. “You’re all right,” he said quietly, squeezing briefly before he turned and strode into the lab, Abby prattling on at him. 

Smoothing her hair down, Ziva glanced at McGee. “Where’s Tony?”

“Getting some pizzas for us. Gibbs said it’ll be a long night,” he said quietly.

She sighed. “We have something?”

He nodded grimly. “Fingerprint match on your necklace, and stuff on the computer.”

“Not good, then,” she said, glancing out the tiny half-moon window as she tried to orient herself. It was darker than it should have been outside, and rain pelted against the glass. 

McGee sighed. “Come and see.”

She followed him out to the lab, smiling slightly at Abby, who bopped around the three of them, a fresh Caf-Pow jiggling in her fingers. Her ponytails were braided today, a sure sign of a bit too much caffeine for that much effort. 

“So, this guy—“ she pointed at the screen, where Akil’s face stared out at them, eyes boring into Ziva directly, it seemed—“is in the country under the name Nabil Haddad, as a Saudi national on a work visa. His fingerprints matched ones found both on Ziva’s necklace—“

_He played with the Star of David for a moment before tugging the chain from her neck, a burning scratch on her bruised neck._

“—and on the memory stick you brought back from the house, but not on the laptop,” Abby finished finally. 

McGee cleared his throat, jumping in. “There were a bunch of encoded files on the laptop, but we cracked them pretty easily. There was information about NCIS and the Navy Yard, observations, and some notes on you, Ziva,” he said, tone faintly apologetic. 

Ziva said nothing, keeping her attention on the face staring at her from the computer screen. Gibbs, however, never had _nothing_ to say. “So we think they were planning an attack on the Navy Yard,” he said curtly. 

“Not so much on the Navy Yard. Most of their surveillance consists of computer access and people they could manipulate for passwords, so I think they were looking for an internal strike. But they can’t get building access without passwords or ID cards, so they haven’t had much luck,” McGee said. 

Stepping back, Ziva placed her palms on the cool counter and leaned her weight onto them, eyes narrowing. “This is what they wanted. Why they took me,” she said finally.

All eyes turned to her, boring into her, and she straightened her spine instinctively. “He knew I was NCIS, from my files, and I think Michael must have mentioned me. He asked me for my passwords, to get into the system.”

“But he didn’t get them,” McGee said uneasily. 

“Of course not,” she said stiffly, color rising on her collarbones. Her skin felt as if it was crawling over her limbs, stomach curdling. “But the cell is still active, obviously. Feldman’s murder was just to get us out in the open.”

“Then we’ve got to find the cell before they find us. Can we track their movements?” Gibbs asked, tone sharp.

Abby and McGee exchanged a pained look. “Not until we get a trace on them, or something. The address listed for Haddan, or Inbari, whoever he is, it’s a fake,” McGee said finally. 

“You two keep working on it,” Gibbs said, jerking his head at Ziva as he headed out. 

Whispering a quiet thanks to Abby, Ziva hurried after him. “What can I do?” she asked. 

“Go down to Autopsy and let Ducky know he can release Corporal Feldman’s body to her father. We solved her murder, she should get some peace,” Gibbs said, something distant in his voice. 

In her mind’s eye, she could see the photos of his wife and daughter in a manila folder, handing it to Ari, asking for answers she would never receive, because that did not work out as planned, either. It still left a faint ache in her middle, the knowledge that her intelligence led to so much pain for these people she has grown to know as family. 

But now was not the time for that, not when there was work to do.

“No problem,” she said finally. “You are not coming?”

“Going up to see the Director; the other agencies need to know this guy’s in the country,” he said, glancing over at her. “That means you’re taking the stairs, David.”

*

“Oh, I am glad to send her home,” Ducky said as Ziva sat in Palmer’s office chair once more. She watched as he slid Leah Feldman back into the wall of slabs, shutting her door with a sense of finality. “She didn’t belong here, that’s for certain.”

Palmer, meanwhile, was busy poking around Alam Salif’s body, which was grey under the bright lights. “The bullet sliced the aorta. This guy never had a chance,” he said to Ducky. 

“Somehow, I don’t regret it,” Ducky replied coolly. “This poor girl had done nothing wrong.”

Ziva drummed her fingers on Palmer’s desk, jaw clenched. “It is my fault,” she said after a moment, watching flecks of light dance on empty metal slabs. 

Ducky looked over her, eyes wide with surprise. “Certainly not, my dear,” he said, walking over. “You cannot let this become your responsibility.”

She sighed, glancing up at his kind, lined face. “I know.”

“Obviously you don’t, or else you wouldn’t look as if the weight of the world rested on your shoulders,” he said gently, propping his hip against the desk.

Leaning back in the chair, she met his gaze easily, chewing on the inside of her lip. “Did you watch my tape as well?” she asked after a moment. 

The doctor’s mouth pursed tightly, a hardening of his eyes nearly imperceptible. “Yes. They asked me for a psychological profile on your captor.”

“And? What is his next move?” she pressed, curling her fingers into themselves. “I cannot figure him out.”

Ducky paused only to pull over another chair, sitting comfortingly close to her. Palmer continued to work behind them, but she knew he was watching them intently. “He’s taunting everyone, at this point. It’s still part of the game, very much in his control, and it’s always been about you. He’s trying to draw you out,” he said thoughtfully. 

“Get me alone,” she added quietly.

“No, not necessarily alone. The necklace was addressed to Anthony, yes?”

She licked her lips, pressing fingertips to the bridge of her nose. “Yes. So he wants Tony now?”

“He wants both of you. He wants the opportunity for leverage,” Ducky said, accent curling warmth into the awful words. “He is counting on having had enough of an impact you on psychologically that either you or Tony will give him what he wants, to halt any sort of attempted repetition of the torture on either of you.”

The chilly, sterile air seeped directly into her veins; she shivered inside and out, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Good,” she said finally, voice only holding the slightest hint of strain. “This is good. Thank you, Ducky.”

She stood to go, but a gentle touch on her wrist halted her, Ducky’s callused fingers resting lightly. “Do watch out, Ziva,” he said gently. “We’ve only just gotten you back.”

Warmth curled through the knot in her stomach, and she gave him a brief flash of a smile. “Thank you,” she said, nodding at Palmer before hurrying out to the elevators.

*

It was nearly eleven at night, and the rain had finally stopped, for good, according to McGee and his weather websites. The pizzas lay demolished, and now all four of them stared at the plasma, circling it in their chairs as if it would start talking at some point. Ziva knew Tony was looking at her more than the plasma, but she kept her eyes straight ahead. She knew he would know something was up, and after her conversation with Ducky, she could not have him hovering. What she had not realized before was that it was not just her in danger anymore. It was all of them, and she needed to figure out how to take care of this with as little harm to her team as possible.

“Fake name, fake visa, fake address, no permanent cell phone, no credit cards or bank accounts. This guy’s good,” McGee said after a long silence, hair falling into his eyes as he rubbed his scalp. 

“Well, find something,” Gibbs snapped.

“I’m trying,” McGee replied wearily.

Ziva straightened, fingertips drawing patterns on the arms of her chair. “We are all tired, Gibbs,” she said softly after a moment. 

A moment of weakness was rare for her, especially in the office setting; all three men stared at her for a long minute, until she felt split open and examined, as if on an Autopsy slab. “All I mean to say is—“

“No, you’re right,” Gibbs interrupted briskly, getting up from his chair. “It’s late, we all need sleep. Get out of here.”

McGee and Tony stared at him, slack-jawed with amazement. “Boss, are you sure?” McGee asked hesitantly. 

Tony smacked the back of his head. “Shut up, Probie! Boss, this is amazing, first time ever, I think, can I get a picture of this moment, this wonderful, wonderful moment?—Ouch!”

Gibbs smacked the back of _Tony’s_ head then, and she couldn’t help a grin. “Shut up and get your stuff together. Everyone go home, there’s nothing more to do tonight. We’ll start fresh tomorrow.”

As she turned to grab her bag, Gibbs cornered her behind her desk, looking over her carefully. “If anything seems weird, you call me, Ziver,” he said under his breath. “No matter how stupid it is.”

The concern in his tone still floored her, even after everything that had happened in the past summer, and she nodded slowly, a faint flush at the back of her neck. He nodded, grasping her shoulder gently. “Good.” he said, eyes crinkling, before he headed back over to his desk.

“You know, if you don’t feel safe, I could stay with you—“

“No, Tony,” she interjected, rolling her eyes. “I am not falling for that. Do I look like I’m still in university?”

Tony grumbled wordlessly at his desk while McGee snorted, and even Gibbs cracked a smile. She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, settled her gun in her holster, and headed for the elevator with a wave to them. She stood at the elevator doors, tapping her foot as she heard footsteps behind her.

“Hey, sweet-cheeks.”

At the rarely heard nickname, she looked back at Tony, whose eyes were dark with something she couldn’t quite identify. “Your car or mine?” he asked, a faint leer curling his mouth. 

She rolled her eyes. “You are not coming over,” she said, getting into the elevator. 

“Hey, I just thought you might want a chance to drive my stick,” he said with a smirk, sliding into the elevator as the doors shut. But the concern in his eyes never went away, belying the humor and innuendo, and they did not speak again, even as they walked through the empty lobby.

Together, they entered the parking lot in unusual quiet, walking slowly. She could not escape the sense of being hunted, watched, but now she welcomed it. It was time to take care of this, once and for all. 

Her phone rang in the silence, just as they reached her car. Tony halted, waiting patiently, though she waved him off. Frowning tightly at him, she pulled it out; it was an unknown number, but she flipped it open to answer anyway. “Ziva David.”

_“Shalom, Ziva.”_

Akil’s voice, smooth and dark like Arabic coffee, filtered through the line. She could only stare out into open space, mouth slightly open. 

_“It is so lovely to hear your voice again.”_

Tony’s warm, strong hand at her elbow jolted her out of her daze. “I wish I could say the same,” she said finally, keeping her voice as even as possible. 

A low chuckle, and then: _“I see you are fully recovered. I am very glad to hear it.”_

“What can I do for you?” she asked flatly.

Akil laughed again; she could practically feel his breath against her skin, sour and hot. _“All I wanted to do was return your necklace.”_

“I see,” she said, fingers clenched into a fist.

_“And complete our unfinished business. I do miss you, Ziva.”_

“Let’s meet while you are in town. Name the time and place,” she said, feigning lightness.

_“I will find you, Ziva. Don’t worry.”_

The other end clicked off. Slowly, she flipped her phone shut, ignoring the faint tremble to her fingertips. She tried to flush out the memories of the hot African sun, the slow dark voice in her ear, wheedling her, the chains whipping her legs and sides. The feel of fingers around her neck was inescapable.

“Who was that, Ziva?”

Tony’s voice jarred her out of her head. She looked up, the concern coloring his eyes a bright green in the dim streetlight. The war game flashed into her memory, the loyalty, and then Ducky’s words from earlier: _he wants both of you._

“Come on,” he said again, voice low. “Who was it?”

Breathing in, she pulled her arm from his grasp and shook her head. “No one. An old friend.”

“Didn’t sound like an old friend to me,” he said harshly.

“It is not my fault if you do not have any to compare with,” she snapped, backing up to the driver’s side door of her Mini. 

He breathed in sharply through his nose, following right behind her. “I will trace your goddamn call log.”

She snorted. “Go home, Tony.”

“Fine, I’ll have McGee do it, but I’ll do it right now,” he retorted.

“Why? Why does it matter?” she hissed, turning around. He was closer than she’d thought, and she ended up pressed to the side of her car, looking up into his darkened face, his knees nudging against hers, arm braced on the door, his hand splayed out near her hair. The moon cast odd shadows along the plane of his face, leaving her shivering all over. 

“Because there’s a terrorist trying to kill you, Ziva, I thought we’d already been over this,” he said dryly, a slicing edge to his usually easy tone.

She pushed him away, smoothing back her hair. “And we have also already been over the fact that you are not my brother, father, or boyfriend, and you do not have the right to hover over me.”

His jaw tightened under the skin. “But I am your partner,” he said through clenched teeth. 

“What does that mean anymore?” she asked harshly, her tongue getting the better of her mind. “What is _this_ , Tony? What are we doing?”

Growling low in his throat, he threw up his hands. “Everything has to be a label with you women,” he muttered. “Why do we have to define it? Why can’t I just worry?”

No, she needed to _know_ , and not just continue along with their vague runaround they always did. If he was not going to tell her straight, she did not want any part of anything. It was just too hard to keep pretending, and she thought that the damn conversation over Chinese had taken care of it. 

Apparently, she was wrong.

“Because it may be how you like to work, but it is not like me,” she said curtly, an ache blooming in her chest. “Figure it out.”

Clenching his fists, he turned and strode away from her without another word. She shut her eyes and leaned against the car heavily, keys digging into her palm. The air was cool and fresh, absent of humidity after days of dampness, yet her limbs were heavy, unworkable. She wanted to take it all back, but their limbo was not good enough anymore.

She was about to get into her car when she heard heavy steps come jogging towards her, hitting the asphalt hard. Her nerves crackled anxiously, and she reached for her gun. 

“You know what I told him?”

Her fingers relaxed, and she turned to face Tony, who stood a few yards away from her. “Told who?”

His forehead furrowed deeply. “Your dad. You know what I told him?”

A lump rose in her throat. She merely blinked, fingers unclenching at her sides. 

He breathed out harshly, face red even in the darkness. “After we saw the tape, we all flew to Tel Aviv, and I walked into his office while Gibbs and McGee held his secretary and guard hostage.”

“You are not serious,” she interjected, bubbles of amusement bursting in her chest. 

He glared at her. “Of course I’m serious, we’d do anything for you,” he said, the sincerity in his voice striking enough to shut her up.

She pressed her lips together, mutely signaling for him to go on.

Tony took a deep breath, all the muscles in his body tense against his clothes. “I made him watch the tape. I told him that you were the most important person in my life, Ziva,” he said hoarsely, words clipped at the teeth, as if he was trying to chase them back into his mouth. “I told him I couldn’t wake up every day and know you died hating me, to know that all I had left of you was an empty desk and a ten-minute movie of torture, and I didn’t know how he could watch that tape and not hijack a plane from El Al and find you himself. It didn’t matter if you still hated me at the end of it all, because at least you were alive, and I could live with that.” 

Goosebumps erupted all down her spine and over her arms, but a deep flush rose to her neck. “Quite a speech,” she said faintly. “No wonder he told you.”

He clenched his fists against his sides. “I want the chance to be better, Ziva. And I want it with you,” he said, voice rough in his throat. “We’ve never gotten it right, but you’re alive, and that’s good-enough timing for me.”

There was an odd, damp burn behind her eyes; she blinked rapidly. “Okay,” she said finally, for a lack of anything else. “I was not expecting that.”

He gave her a tight grin, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Just—I don’t know, just think about it. Because I do have it figured out,” he said quietly before turning and walking back to his car, shoulders stiff. 

She watched him walk away and drive off, her keys still dangling from the Mini’s side. She felt cold and hot all over as she finally got in and drove home to her still-too-new empty apartment, but now, she had a place to dive off from into the unknown.

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

 

“Where the hell is DiNozzo?”

Shrugging, Ziva glanced over at her partner’s still-empty desk. Gibbs stormed and paced next to her, while McGee looked only mildly perturbed. 

“Does nine o’clock sound _early_ to you two?” Gibbs continued, face firmly etched with a combination of fury and unease. 

Ziva, who’d been at the office since seven, said nothing. She’d spent the last two hours toying with her barely-picked-at muffin, staring into space. There’d been no contact from Akil since the call last night, but she had not mentioned it to either Gibbs or McGee. She still did not have a plan, but she knew she did not want either of them to be a part of it, and Tony even more so. 

Tony’s words had run on repeat in her mind the whole night, echoing in her sleep and ringing in her ears as she drove to work. However much she wanted them to be, the words she wanted to say in return were not there, lost in the years of keeping her distance and using emotions as tools for manipulation. Still, Tony was nearly as damaged as she was, and for him to put himself out there like that, without humor or cruelty as a deflection—it was a big step, something she had to reciprocate.

Gibbs wheeled on her and smacked his hand on her desk, startling her out of her thoughts. “Did you two have it out or something last night?” he asked intensely. 

Mouth dry, she shook her head slowly. “No. We went our separate ways,” she said evenly.

“Call him,” he ordered, pushing off from her desk. “I’m going for coffee.”

Sighing, she picked up her phone and began dialing, eyes straying to McGee.

“That’s his third cup already,” McGee murmured from across the bullpen.

“Well, he has been here since five,” she muttered, rolling her eyes as Tony’s voicemail picked up; it was the theme to one of his James Bond movies, along with his own smooth tones. _Hello, this is Anthony DiNozzo…_

“I have a bad feeling about all this,” McGee said, brow furrowing. “Tony hasn’t been late in months.”

She hung up without leaving a message; leaving messages became pointless after the third or so. “He probably just forgot to set his alarm,” she said, trying to loosen the curdling knot in her middle. “If we do not have anything by the time Gibbs gets back, he will murder us.”

Frowning, McGee shrugged and turned to his computer screen while she curled into her chair and stared off out into space. Everyone in the building seemed tense and scattered, moving at quicker paces than yesterday. Certainly, that was a by-product of Director Vance’s conversation with Gibbs about all the information about NCIS found on the computer at the crime scene, but it made her uneasy.

Wetting her lips, she turned to McGee. “Will you do something for me?” she asked. 

He glanced over, face wide open with curiosity. “Case-related?”

“Personal.”

He shrugged. “Sure. What’s up?”

She scribbled down the cell phone number Akil had called her on the night before, and walked the scrap of paper over to his desk. “Put a trace on this number. If it becomes active anywhere, let me know where,” she said softly. 

McGee took the slip of paper, eying her warily. “What is this about, Ziva?” he asked. 

Shaking her head, she patted his hand in thanks. “I’m going to call Tony again,” she said briskly. 

Behind her, McGee clacked away on his keyboard. She could feel his eyes on her back, but he was polite enough not to pester her. If it were Tony, he would not let anything like that go. She sat at her desk and dialed Tony’s number from her desk phone once more, holding her breath as it rang. 

_Hello, this is Anthony DiNozzo—_

She hung up just as Gibbs circled back to their pit, without fresh coffee and looking even angrier than before. “His car is out in the parking lot,” he snapped. 

Blinking, she drummed her fingers on the desktop. “What?”

“DiNozzo’s car, it’s in the lot. It’s _here_ , so where is he?” he barked. 

“He is not answering his phone,” she said. “I have called to Abby and Ducky, neither of them of seen him today.”

Mouth pursed tightly, Gibbs stalked over to his desk and grabbed his gun and badge. “I’m going out.”

Hesitantly, McGee stood, gathering his things. “Where?”

“DiNozzo’s apartment. McGee, put a trace on his cell, I want to find him now,” Gibbs all but growled. 

“What am I to do?” Ziva asked, frowning. 

“Keep trying his cell, and go see if Abby’s got anything,” he replied as he walked past. 

She and McGee stared at each other. “Should we be worried now?” McGee asked after a moment.

Shrugging, she stood, running her fingers over her cell phone. “Let me know if you get any hits,” she said. 

“On which number?” he asked. 

“Either,” she retorted before heading towards the stairs, hoping to avoid Gibbs at the elevator. 

Hope was not with her, it seemed. He was waiting with an ice-cold stare by the doorway to the stairwell, body radiating tension. She clenched her fists at her sides, but continued on her path. “Thought you were going to Tony’s,” she said evenly.

“And I thought you said nothing happened last night. You first,” he retorted. 

Together, they entered the stairwell and began a slow decent downstairs. She had further to go, but she knew he was not going to let her be until he got answers. 

“We did not fight, if that is what you think. We are not children,” she said heatedly. 

“Then quit acting like one,” he shot back. “What happened?”

She leaned into the railing, letting the cool metal slide against her palm. “Nothing.”

They hit the landing for the lobby, his stop. She made to walk past him, heading down into the basement, but his strong, callused hand at her elbow halted her right in her tracks. “Then tell me what the unknown phone call was from when you left last night,” he said evenly.

Her mouth fell open as she stared at him. “Did you _pull_ my phone records?”

“This case is centered on you, Ziva. I’ve pulled everything,” he said calmly. “So tell me.”

Shifting uncomfortably, she forced herself to keep his gaze. “It was Akil. He insinuated that he would be in touch with me. He said he sent the necklace to Tony,” she said, voice devoid of feeling, even as she tried to control the trembling in her ribcage. 

Gibbs dropped his hand from her, face deeply lined. “I told you to call me if anything happened.”

“I did not want to involve any of you,” she protested, her neck hot with something like shame. “This is my fault, and I am going to take care of it.”

“That isn’t how this works, Ziva, and you know that!” he thundered at her, grasping her upper arm. “We’re a team, and we stick together.”

She lowered her eyes, the knot in her stomach twisting double-time. “I am sorry,” she said finally. “But this does not explain Tony’s absence.”

“Doesn’t it?” Gibbs asked darkly, releasing her. “Go to the lab, and if _anything_ changes—“

“I will call you,” she finished, looking at him once more. 

He nodded once and exited the stairwell, leaving her alone with only the echo of the slamming door to console her.

*

“You told me no one was going to get shot at.”

Ziva sighed. “No one has been shot at, Abby.”

Abby rubbed her hands together anxiously, pacing past Major Mass Spec. Sunlight peeked through the half-moon windows at the ceiling, and Ziva stood within the thin shafts of warmth at the side of the lab furthest from the door, between the back counter and Abby’s row of computers and screen. 

“Then where is Tony? He doesn’t just disappear! He’s loud, he’s slightly offensive! No one should be caught dead trying to do something to him!” Abby rambled, her lab coat fluttering behind her as she paced to and fro. 

Abby had been like this for an hour, ever since Ziva arrived in the lab, feeling downtrodden and angry at herself, and Abby was not helping the situation. Ziva itched for something to do, something to occupy herself, to keep her from thinking of Tony’s intense gaze over and over.

“Could I look at the file on me?” Ziva asked abruptly. 

Abby stopped and stared at her quizzically. “What file?”

“The one from Salif’s computer. The notes they were taking on me. I’d like to see them,” she said lightly. 

Frowning, Abby strode over to her computer and began typing rapidly. “It’s so invasive, being watched like that,” she said, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Why do you want to know? I wouldn’t want to know.”

Ziva shrugged. “I want to know what was so fascinating.”

The computer beeped, and Abby stepped aside. “Knock yourself out. I think I need a clown cake, or something. Want anything from the machine?” 

Ziva shook her head, and in a swirl of black-and-white, Abby was gone as fast as her platforms could take her. Pursing her lips, Ziva settled herself in front of the computer, eyes skimming the files in front of her. 

_Released from Bethesda. Room #216. Cannot find new living situation._

_August 25th: Moves into new apartment in Georgetown. Still moving slow, on desk duty. DiNozzo leaves last…_

_Sept. 8th, DiNozzo for dinner. Leaves after midnight…_

_…DiNozzo walks her to car nearly every evening._

If Ziva hadn’t already felt a gnawing in her gut, this put her over the edge. She clicked out of the file and shut her eyes, sucking in a deep breath to keep her equilibrium. She should have _known_. How could she have been so foolish, to be so open?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she answered without thinking. “David.”

First, there was a slightly shuddery breath into the phone. Then: “Ziva.”

The hair on the nape of her neck stood up at Tony’s voice, the nearly perfectly forced normalcy, the ease which he was trying to speak, except that he was all but whispering. “Where are you?” she hissed, clenching her free hand into a fist. “Gibbs is going to your apartment.”

“Well, I’m not _there_ ,” he muttered, voice slightly thick, as if he had a cold. “Get him back to the Navy Yard.”

“Where are you?” she asked angrily, pacing between the counters in the lab, repeating Abby’s pattern. 

“Ziva, for once, you just need to listen to me,” he said, voice deadly serious, so much so it stopped her dead in her tracks, breath caught in her chest. “Make him come back to the Yard, and don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

She shook her head, wishing she could jump through the phone and strangle him. “Tony—“

“I have to go.” She could hear a shuffle in the background. “Nothing stupid, sweet cheeks.”

“Tony—“

In the distance, she heard the sound of fist on flesh, a muffled groan. The phone on the other end clattered to the ground amidst muttered Arabic, and nerves solidified their pit in her stomach, roiling and pulsing. 

She held her breath as the phone fuzzed again, and then: “Hello, Ziva. I had no idea DiNozzo was so full of ingenuity.”

Gritting her teeth, she breathed out silently, Akil’s voice ringing in her ear. “Surprise,” she replied coolly. 

“Come meet us. Come alone, without backup. Take off the trace I am sure Gibbs has put on your phone, and we will settle this the way it should have been,” he said, voice low and musical. 

Licking her lips, she drummed her fingers against her thigh. “You will not hurt him?”

Akil chuckled. “No guarantees. But I can tell you that if you are not alone, I will begin cutting off pieces of him, and I will give them to you one by one.”

The pit in her stomach turned wretchedly, and she swallowed. “Fine.”

Nothing but silence met her, and she shut her phone with a thoughtful snap. Her nerves tingled in a way Tony would describe as her “super-ninja skills” kicking in, and she stood still for only a moment more before turning on her heel and heading out of the lab towards the elevator. 

When she arrived at the pit, McGee was careening his way towards her, eyes wide. “Tony just called you—“

“Where was he?” she demanded. 

“Twenty miles from here,” he said, brow furrowed. “In the middle of the woods. What did he say?”

She shook her head, the tips of her fingers cold. “Call Gibbs, get him back here. I’m going after Tony.”

McGee gaped at her, and grasped her elbow. “Are you crazy? Ziva, no—“

Wresting her arm from his hand, she glared at him. “Call Gibbs, Tim. I need to go,” she said evenly, going to her desk and pulling out her gun before she headed towards the elevators once more. 

“You don’t even know what you’re up against! Ziva, wait!” McGee called plaintively, but she ignored him. 

The elevator doors opened as she walked towards them, and Gibbs emerged, face lined and jaw set tightly. He took one look at her, and slammed a hand on her shoulder, halting her. “No.”

“Let go,” she said evenly. 

“Not a chance,” he replied flatly.

She bristled, meeting his gaze head-on. “They will kill him.”

Mouth thinning, Gibbs dropped his hand. “You can’t go.”

_Don’t do anything stupid._

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Ziva took a step back. “He wants me,” she repeated stonily.

“It’s not an option,” Gibbs replied wearily.

She shut her eyes and leaned against the wall, hand pressed to her gun in comfort. She could see Tony’s face from the night before, the clear, raw hunger, the something foreign she’d seen all along. Her hand clenched in memory of broken bones, screaming and crying, all in defense of a man and a family she had taken as her own, and been accepted by, after the betrayal of her biology. 

“It is the only option,” she said finally, meeting Gibbs’ icy eyes. “But we need a plan.”

*

With terrorists, Ziva knew it was never as simple as a trade, or a barter. Akil wanted NCIS information, and he would use Tony however way possible to get it. Even with attempting to ensure her complete solitude and vulnerability, he had a back-up plan of some sort (because he was anything but stupid), so there were many avenues to approach and discuss. If Ziva had a week, she would feel prepared for this kind of operation. 

She had an hour, Gibbs and McGee. 

“His back-up will not be other people, in case he fails. He will not want to take the whole cell down with him,” she said as they held conference in the space between their desks, orangey-yellow sunlight streaming in through the windows. The floor was weirdly empty for near noon, lending everything an eerie feel. 

“So what, a bomb?” McGee asked, clacking away on his computer. 

“The switch will be on him, certainly,” Gibbs added, pacing across the width of the pit. 

She pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and then began disassembling her gun at a corner of her desk, clearing her mind. “However we cannot forget that he may have something attached to Tony as well,” she said coolly, the slim fittings of her Sig bringing her focus and clarity. 

“No winning there,” McGee said darkly. 

She licked her lips in concentration, sliding the pieces together. “What do you have with you, McGee?” she asked after a moment, a spark, a flash of her old life with Mossad snapping in front of her. 

His brows narrowed. “Enough.”

Gibbs stopped his pacing, holding her gaze. “What are you thinking?”

She waited a moment, fitting her gun completely back together before hopping to her feet. “I did an operation with Mossad years ago which involved a situation like this. The bombs were electronic, and we were able to disable them from afar. If you have some sort of transmitter, I will wear it, and get close enough to get you a signal,” she said evenly.

McGee’s gaze brightened. “I’ve got just the thing,” he said before jumping to his feet and heading towards the stairs, most likely to Abby’s lab.

“And if that doesn’t work? If he doesn’t have a bomb, and he’s just itching for a killing spree?” Gibbs asked harshly. 

Taking a deep breath, she holstered her gun and met his gaze straight-on. “Then I will improvise.”

Gibbs grimaced. “I don’t like taking chances with my people.”

“It’s necessary, now,” she said quietly, glancing off into the sunny landscape. Resolution ran like ice water through her veins, an odd sort of clarity she had been searching for. “I am not the same agent Akil faced before.”

Approaching her, Gibbs held her elbow in his grasp tightly, but not painfully. “This bastard’s done things to you. You can’t stay objective,” he said under his breath. 

She glanced at him, shoulders back. “When it comes to Tony, I can,” she said finally, voice steady. 

“I think it’s worse with him involved,” he retorted. 

Holding her breath, she touched Gibbs’s arm gently. “Nothing will happen to him, Gibbs,” she said quietly. 

Gibbs let her arm loose, stepping away from her. “And you?” he asked piercingly. 

McGee whooped triumphantly as he returned, panting and red faced. “Found it! Let’s hook you up, Ziva,” he called, getting back to his feet. 

Smiling tightly, she shrugged once. “I suppose we shall see,” she said lightly before walking over to McGee. 

Exactly an hour later, she sat in her Mini, idling in the long gravel driveway McGee’s trace had led her to, her Sig at her hip. A white farmhouse lay in front of her, oddly silent. The transmitter lay embedded in her jacket sleeve, right at the cuff, and she waited in silence and stillness, sun dappling through the thick tree cover. Gibbs and McGee were set up in a surveillance van three miles away, hidden from view and listening in, ready to swoop in if necessary. But, for all the precautions, it was just her out here, and she did not mind at all. 

The front door swung open, and Akil strolled out easily. She licked her lips and got out of the car, slamming the door and standing at attention, about thirty yards away. 

McGee swore quietly in her earpiece. “Not close enough to get anything, Ziva.”

Akil stood straight and tall in the warm autumn sunlight, hair glancing blue-black against the light. Clean-shaven and tidy, he looked respectable and handsome, and so much like Ari that she had to catch her breath and regain her focus. Seeing her, he flashed a smile, wide and piercing, and made a jerking hand motion at the front door. She could see a body in the shadows, and she steadied her breaths. 

“Ziva, you look lovely,” Akil called from the porch as an unfamiliar Arab man dragged Tony out from the house and leveraged him to a stand.

She gritted her teeth, narrowing her eyes at Tony. Dried blood covered his nose and chin, he had a black eye, and he seemed to favor his right side as he stood, hand bound behind him, still in his clothes from the day before. Rage curled through her, but she sucked in a breath and held it, fingertips grazing her gun for stability. 

Tony caught her eye and frowned, and she glared right back, but kept her focus on Akil. “I am sure I do,” she said evenly. 

“And your hand, it looks good as new. I am impressed with your American doctors,” Akil said genially.

Her stiff thumb flinched, but she remained cool. “They were not as impressed with your work.”

He kept the cold smile on his face, flicking his jacket open with one smooth motion. “No bomb on me, Ziva. Do not look so distressed.”

“I assure you, I am not,” she said, stepping towards them. Tony shook his head once, and her heart jumped. 

“Take out your earpiece or I shall kill you,” Akil said warmly, pulling a sleek pistol from his coat pocket and aiming at her casually. 

“I do not have one,” she said evenly, McGee’s breathing a steadying rhythm in her ear.

Akil sighed, and without preamble used the butt of his gun as a bludgeon against Tony’s left side. Knees buckling, Tony muffled a harsh, guttural groan of pain, eyes screwed shut. Her fingers went right to her gun and she aimed a kill shot between Akil’s eyes, face reddening, and Akil’s lackey pulled a knife and glanced it along the line of Tony’s throat, nicking him lightly.

“I am not playing a game anymore,” Akil said, the friendly tone dropping into something flat and chilly. “Pull it out, and then you will drop your gun and walk slowly to me.”

In her ear, McGee breathed out. “Gibbs wants you to pull it out. I can handle it,” he murmured. 

“I am not in the mood for this,” Akil said before hitting Tony again in the same place. Tony fell back against the door for support, face red and lined with pain. 

Chest tightening, she dropped her gun and kicked it aside before slowly walking towards Akil. She came halfway before stopping, right in the cool shadow of the house. “Let Tony go,” she said steadily. 

Smiling grimly, Akil shoved Tony in her direction. Tony limped down the steps and over as straight-backed as he could; as he grew closer, she could see his nose set at a funny angle, bruises blooming on his face, and her stomach twisted on itself sickeningly. 

They met in the middle, Tony breathing harshly. “I told you, nothing stupid,” he muttered, voice breaking. 

She smiled slightly, touching his jacket sleeve lightly. “Do not worry,” she said with a lightness she did not feel. 

“There’s a bomb on me, Ziva, he’s going to kill me anyway,” he said, pupils thick and eyes wide. 

“And you will be fine,” she whispered. “Get in my car and drive away.”

With that, she pulled the earpiece from her ear, dropped it in Tony’s hand, and began the last half of the walk towards Akil. She could feel Tony’s eyes boring into her back, a horrible hot knot seeping between her shoulder blades, but she kept her head high, her gaze focused. Now, she could only wait. 

When she reached Akil, he grasped her by the nape of her neck and jerked her towards him. “Now the fun begins,” he murmured before smacking the butt of his gun across her cheek. 

Tony shouted from her car, arm wrapped protectively over his bruised ribs, and she sucked in a harsh breath, ears ringing dully. “Wait,” she breathed out faintly, blinking rapidly. Feet sounded on the porch, heading down to the gravel, and her vision tunneled into just Akil, his smiling, harsh face, the need to pull the skin from his bones overwhelming her. 

“Tony, go!” she yelled, spitting blood from her split lip before socking her elbow into Akil’s gut with all her force. He buckled and swore in Arabic, giving her enough leverage to kick him off his feet and snatch up his gun. Face throbbing, she stepped back and aimed at his head, gun steady in her hands. 

Akil looked up at her, face placid. “It is not this easy,” he said evenly. 

She chanced a glance towards the gravel, autumn breeze cooling her through despite the sunshine. Two men, dark and unshaven and tall, stood with Tony on his knees in front of them; one had a gun pointed at his head, while the first had his gun trained on her. Tony stared at her through the blood and sweat, eyes piercing her straight through, but he managed a tight, tiny smile. 

“Put down the gun, or they will kill him,” Akil said slowly, bringing her attention back to his prone form. 

“Don’t you dare,” Tony called roughly, earning a shove. 

“Just another man to die because of you. Could you live with it?” Akil continued softly. 

“It isn’t worth it, Ziva!” Tony shouted. “Shoot him!”

Her chest seemed to collapse on itself, suffocating her breaths, and she licked her lips, jaw clenched. McGee was working fervently, she knew, she just needed to get him more _time_. 

Finally, she looked at Akil, who lay as comfortably as a sheik on the grimy porch floor, eyes gleaming. “I did not kill Michael,” she said evenly. 

“Semantics. You all but pulled the trigger,” he replied with an easy shrug. “And DiNozzo is more important than either of them, wouldn’t you say?”

“You assume quite a lot,” she retorted. “You have no idea.”

“I have enough,” he said, eyes narrowing. “And if you do not put the gun down, I will kill him.”

He held up a silver pen-like object, thumb hovering over the button, clearly the detonator. She took two steps down off the porch as he lifted himself to his feet and followed, looking like a jungle cat in the thin sunlight. “Put it down, Ziva. You have enough blood on your hands. Don’t add another.”

Behind her, Tony growled low in his throat. “This is bigger than us,” he said hoarsely, his raw voice sending shudders through her skin.

Taking a deep breath, she glanced back at him, and prayed for whatever luck she might have that McGee was done. “No, it is not,” she said softly, face flushing as his eyes widened. 

Before he could say a word, she turned back to Akil, who looked smug and comfortable, and dropped the gun, kicking it towards him. He picked it up, his fingers still dancing along the detonator. 

“The old Ziva David would never make this choice,” he said thoughtfully. “I am surprised to have had such an effect.”

She remained mute, heart beating hard and painfully against her ribs. Her fingers curled in the cuffs in her jacket, prepared. The tree branches rattled and shifted above them with the breeze, Tony’s shallow breathing a comforting rhythm against her nerves. She could hear the men at Tony’s side step away, far enough to avoid damage from a blast.

“Passwords, Ziva,” Akil said gently, though his eyes were hard and dark. 

At that, she smiled faintly, a cruel twist of her mouth. “No,” she said clearly.

Slowly, Akil shook his head. “Too bad,” he murmured, and clicked the detonator. 

Time slowed, but she did not turn around, did not push her luck. She took even breaths as the air remained silent and smokeless, only the birds chirping above. A horribly dark look passed over Akil’s face, and he clicked it once more, with the same result—or lack thereof. 

“Too bad indeed,” she repeated with a smirk before lowering her shoulder and running into Akil, knocking him to the ground. 

Arabic curses mixed with English from Tony filled her ringing head as she and Akil hit the ground hard, he scrabbling at her fiercely. The breath left her for a moment, and she pried his gun from his hand before rolling away and up to a sit, quickly firing off a few shots to the man on Tony’s left side. She caught him in the knees and he fell to the ground with a howl, writhing in pain, but she spared him no more thought, hopping to her feet. 

The other man, taller and faster, managed to get off a shot at Tony, who had taken the hint and ducked and rolled as fast as he could despite bound hands and his injuries, before she took him out with a kill shot directly to the forehead. He collapsed next to her car, blood spray thick and crimson against the bright blue paint, but Tony was still moving, which was all that mattered. 

From afar, she could hear squealing tires, a sure sound of Gibbs and McGee, and she glanced over at Akil, who was struggling to his feet. “Too bad,” she said again, voice deadly low as she lifted the gun, aiming right between his eyes. 

For once, he looked as a human being, wide-eyed and scared, his mouth thin and hands trembling faintly. Yet all she had for him was anger and grief, memories of hot days and cold nights in a tiny cell, the reminders of her old life forced into her ears as he broke her, both physically and mentally. She looked at him then, and the night in Gibbs’s basement four years ago resurfaced, remembering Ari’s wide eyes, his utter disbelief. Then, it had been mournful, an unfortunate necessity. 

Now, it was a chance, a deserved one. 

The black unmarked van pulled up with a horrible screech, and Gibbs was out of the car in a second, gun out and voice carrying as he told everyone to keep still, stay on the ground, the usual diatribe for the unworthy criminal. McGee followed, pale and unsteady, on the phone for back-up, she assumed, but she kept her focus on Akil, finger itching to pull the trigger, to close the door on this once and for all. 

Akil narrowed his eyes. “Kill me, then,” he said acridly.

“I would like to,” she said quietly, swallowing hard. “Very much so.”

“Too weak, now that you have been through so much?” he mocked, though the fear was clear in his gaze. 

She took a moment to glance at Tony. Gibbs, who had left the restraining of the downed man to McGee, was helping Tony to his feet, having freed the younger man’s hands. Tony looked over at her, bloodied and battered, and gave her a slow, small smile despite the grime and bruises. Her pulse raced against her skin, hot and fast and flushing the nape of her neck, and she looked back to Akil, mind clear.

“You make the same mistake Michael and my father did,” she said finally, hearing the crunch of gravel from McGee’s footsteps behind her. “I am not what I once was, but I am better for it. I suppose I could thank you for it.”

“But why don’t we just take him into custody instead?” McGee interjected as he strode past, handling Akil roughly into handcuffs. 

She lowered the gun and tossed it aside, planting her hands on her hips. “Good plan,” she said, breathing in fully for the first time in what seemed like days. “And good work, Tim,” she added after a quiet moment. 

McGee flushed as they headed towards her car, pushing Akil roughly in front of him. “Barely made it. It’s lucky we had the earpiece in, we knew just when to get here,” he said tiredly. 

Gibbs, having settled Tony gently on the hood of her car, faced her with a glare. “That was all kinds of dangerous, David,” he said flatly. 

She shrugged, glancing at Tony. “It worked. It’s over.”

Glancing her over, Gibbs reached out and grasped her shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “Good work, Ziver,” he murmured before joining McGee in rounding up Akil and his living associate. 

Fingers itching to touch Tony, she watched him carefully. “I am sorry,” she said softly. 

Shrugging painfully, Tony reached out a blood-encrusted hand and grasped her fingers gently with his. “This is a movie waiting to be written, ninja girl,” he said, clearly forcing his humor as his breath wheezed in and out. “I finally get to be the star.”

She rolled her eyes, and he squeezed her fingertips once more, eyes dark with feeling. He opened his mouth once more, but the sirens from the ambulance and the dust rising from the NCIS backup pressed them apart, and time forced them to wait once more. 

*

Nearly a week later, at the cusp of October, Ziva stood under a grey Pennsylvania sky in a quiet cemetery, staring at the headstone of Leah Feldman.

A breeze settled through her hair, and she smoothed it back from her face unconsciously, straight and fine under her fingertips. Her coat was too thin for the unseasonably cool day, and she felt the wind right through her somber black dress. The grass was still soft enough that her heels sank slightly, but she ignored it, gaze focused. 

She’d taken a personal day to drive up here, but Gibbs had not blinked when she requested the time off. She had an uncanny feeling that he _knew_ where she was headed, but she did not mind. The team was quiet at the moment, after all the excitement from the last case. Akil’s cell was dismantled, some still on the run, Akil was safely imprisoned, and NCIS and its secrets were still safe. Tony had been in the hospital for three days before being released, and wouldn’t be put back on active duty for another week or two, at least, due to his ribs still healing. 

They’d had little to no solitary interaction since the day in the woods, and she missed him. She’d been to visit his apartment of course, but it seemed that every time she went, _someone_ else was there as well. Yesterday, it had been Palmer, and she’d wanted to tear out her hair with her frustrations. Questions and confessions bubbled at her lips, she was desperate to share them, but they were forced to wait, as they always did. 

Instead, she stood at the marker for a young girl killed in the search for Ziva, feeling as if she could reach out and touch Leah’s ghost in the air around her. 

In the days since, she felt as if all the ghosts of her past had come out to haunt her, to demand some sort of absolution. Michael appeared in her dreams, just standing in absolute silence; once a day, she had thought she’d seen Ari walking down the sidewalk, getting a cup of coffee. Her father had sent a message to her through Vance, a clinical form letter of thanks for her help in capturing one of Mossad’s most wanted, which she’d read and stuffed into her deepest desk drawer. 

It was in those moments that she longed for Tony, even for the most mundane reasons. He knew how to bring her out of her head, how to make her smile, and she wanted it all the time, despite his general lack of courtesy and tendency towards immaturity, which was really amusing, when she thought about it. 

Dying leaves rustled above her, and she sighed silently. She settled into a crouch at the marker, sliding her fingers over the etched name and date of Leah’s too-soon death. 

“I am sorry,” she said out loud, speaking not only to Leah but to them all. “I am very sorry.”

Breathing in the smoky cool air, she straightened back up, whispered a quiet prayer in Hebrew, and then turned to begin the walk back to her car (freshly painted, after the Akil incident left it grimy and bloody). As she crossed the parking lot, a long frame in black startled her as he leaned against her car. She narrowed her eyes and recognized Tony, who held himself oddly due to his injuries, but her chest loosened its claw on her heart just slightly at the sight of him. 

“Well, fancy seeing you here,” he called as she came closer, straightening up. 

“You did not drive all the way up here, did you?” she asked instead, planting her hands on her hips. The breeze danced along the hem of her dress and long coat, toes curling in her heels. 

Tony smiled, a sharp flash of white that she’d missed, she realized with a start. “McGee did. Said he thought you might want company.”

Inwardly smiling, she kept her face placid. “It was a brief trip, he should not have troubled you in your recovery,” she said, halting in her steps as she came toe to toe with him. 

“I wanted to be here,” he replied simply, hesitating only a moment before he rested a hand on her elbow; she could feel the heat of him through her coat. “I’ve wanted to—“

“I know,” she injected. “I have, as well.”

Expression relaxed and easy, he smiled slow and soft, eyes a deep gold-green in the autumn grey; it sent shivers through her entire body. “So, I thought maybe we could go grab something to eat, since we’re here and all.”

She raised a brow, tilting her head up slightly. “Would this be a date?”

“Apparently not a very romantic one, considering we’re hanging out in a cemetery, but I’m willing to go with it,” he said dryly, his fingertips drawing circles on the fabric of her coat that she could positively feel on her bare skin. “I can be flexible.”

Curling her fingers against the urge to touch his bare skin, she smiled back slightly. “I would like that,” she said softly. 

He smirked, eyes bright, and other than a few remaining marks and scars, he looked like the Tony of old, and she felt like the Ziva of old. But, as they parted and got into her car, she knew it was more of an improved revival, rather than a return to old practices. 

As she put the key in the ignition, his bare hand on hers stopped her. She looked over at him, heart pressed to her sternum with nerves. “Yes?”

“Thank you, Ziva,” he said seriously, eyes warm and face gentle. 

Hesitating only for a moment, she abruptly leaned in and pressed her cool mouth to his, a warm dry kiss born of long wanting and dancing hesitation. It was brief and almost nothing, air and warmth and implication, but the imprint of his mouth on hers would remain for days. 

“You came after me. I will always come after you,” she said simply, their faces still very close, his breath warming her skin. 

His eyes softened, and he squeezed the hand he’d covered on the steering wheel before nodding and sitting back, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. She could not help her own smile as she sat back and started the car. There would be difficulties ahead, of course, but even as they argued over where to go and what kind of food they were in the mood for, it felt as normal as breathing, as simple as gravity.

She knew they had both left ghosts behind in that cemetery.

*


End file.
